Higham Ferrers market street roofs open up to skylights or rooflights
A market town in the Nene Valley, built around its Market Square, College Street and a Grade I church. Daylight from above suits its old roofs and its darker inner rooms.
Around the Market Square and beyond the old core
Higham Ferrers sits in the Nene Valley, close to the Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire borders, and is both a market town and a civil parish. A charter of 1251 made it a borough at the gates of a castle, and the centre still holds a good run of historic buildings. Two kinds of home matter when you are thinking about a roof, so here they are in turn.
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Historic buildings on the market streets
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Family houses and extensions away from the centre
The older part of town gathers around the Market Square and College Street, with St Mary's, a Grade I listed church founded in the thirteenth century, close by. Roofs in a place like this are seen from the street, from the churchyard and from upstairs windows across the road, so a new opening has to look settled. A conservation rooflight is slim and sits low in the slope, which keeps the line of the roof calm, and it can bring real daylight to an attic room or a dark stair. If the building is listed, the council decides on consent before any work is booked.
Away from the old core, the town has houses with lofts that have been boarded out as bedrooms, small bathrooms tucked into the middle of the plan, and back extensions with flat roofs. Here the choices are wider. A roof window takes a loft slope, while an extension or a landing roof takes a flat rooflight, and a bathroom with no outside wall can get its light from a sun tunnel. Gardens sit close together, so a window at the side often faces a fence while the sky above stays open.
Three Higham Ferrers rooms waiting for the sky
A cottage loft under a neighbour's tree
The old roof space has the best ceiling in the house and the dimmest air.
Sideways
A roof space in an older Higham Ferrers cottage can be a lovely thing: low timbers, a sloping ceiling, a bit of quiet away from the rest of the house. The trouble is the window. It is small, set high in the gable, and a tree on the next plot hangs across it. In summer the leaf cover turns the glass green and dark. In winter the bare branches let in a thin grey light that never reaches the bed or the desk.
You switch on the lamp at three in the afternoon and call it cosy. It is cosy, but it is also a room that could be so much more useful.
Straight up
Beside the house stands a tree, and the gable window faces sideways into it. A rooflight in the slope looks up, over the canopy of a nearby tree, at open sky. Straight up is clear, and the daylight comes down onto the floor of the room instead of skimming across it from a gap. For an older roof, a slim conservation-pattern frame with a central bar keeps the slope looking traditional from the road.
The position is chosen on the day of the survey. We stand in the loft, look at where the rafters run and where the shadow of the tree falls, and mark the spot that gives the most even light on the bed, desk or chair you use.
Old roofs in a town with a conservation area need one extra step. The council will confirm whether your street is covered and whether any direction removes the usual permitted development, so ask before you choose a frame. Our planning guide explains the route, and we adjust the product to suit whatever the council says.
| Opening | Suits | Know |
|---|---|---|
| Conservation rooflight | A visible slope on an older house | Slim frame, sits low |
| Roof window | A loft you want to stand and look out of | Opens for air and view |
| Fixed rooflight | A small room that needs light, not air | Simple and neat |
| Sun tunnel | A tiny space beneath a loft or cupboard | Narrow tube, soft light |
An inner bathroom without an external wall
Small rooms can be bright, if the light comes from the right direction.
Sideways
A family house plan can put the bathroom in the middle, with the landing on one side and a bedroom on the other. That keeps the pipes short, but it leaves the room with a vent fan and a bulb. If there is a window, it is small and frosted, and it faces a fence a stride away. You step in on a bright morning and the room still behaves as if it were night.
Steam hangs there longer, as well, because there is nothing to open and no sunshine to dry the walls.
Straight up
A bathroom under the roof can have a soft circle of daylight from a sun tunnel, which runs a reflective tube down from a small dome on the slope. Where there is a little more height, a roof window with frosted glass does the same job with sky to look at and a handle for fresh air. The fence beside the old window has no say in either, because the light arrives from above.
Both options are measured to fit between the rafters, which keeps the structural work light. We also look at where the fan ducts go, so the new opening and the ventilation work together rather than in each other's way.
Privacy is less of a worry than it sounds. A glazed panel in the roof looks up at the sky, and the nearest eyes are birds. Frosted or tinted glass is available if you want the point made twice.
Numbers that govern a new opening in an existing house
- 1.4 W/m²K
- ceiling for a new roof window, or else WER band B
- 2.2 W/m²K
- ceiling for a rooflight, set in Part L Approved Document L
- 4.5 m
- height to a storey's floor, beyond which escape windows do not count
A landing that never sees the day
The part of the house you pass through all day is the part nobody lights.
Sideways
A first-floor landing in a Higham Ferrers family house is a corridor with doors. Every room has a window except the space that joins them. The only light comes from the stairs, and by early evening the upper floor is dark. At the foot of the stair, a tall side window, where there is one, faces a boundary fence.
The stair itself becomes a place to be careful on. Children carry things down it, adults carry washing up, and nobody can quite see the edge of the tread in the grey.
Straight up
When the landing sits under the roof, a rooflight above the stairwell sends daylight down the full height of the house. It can be a fixed pane in a flat section of roof, a roof window in a slope, or a slim flat rooflight on a small upstand. Straight up is clear, so a fence or a neighbour's wall at the side makes no difference to what the glass receives.
Doors can then be left open between landing and bedrooms, and the daylight spills into each. Interior decorating stays simple, because we finish the plaster and the lining around the opening before we leave.
If a loft conversion is part of your plans, the stair has its own rules. How a window and a stair work together is covered in our guide to roof windows, and the survey is the time to ask about it.
Verdict: for a landing or stairwell that sits under a roof, a fixed or opening rooflight overhead lights the whole upper floor from one opening.
Higham Ferrers: council, conservation area and listed buildings
Applications for Higham Ferrers go to North Northamptonshire Council. One entry on the council's list of conservation areas carries the town's name, so check whether your street falls inside before choosing a product. Permitted development stays in a conservation area unless an Article 4 direction takes it away, and the council's planning team is the right place to ask. Listed buildings, such as the town's Grade I church, follow a separate consent route.
The permitted development conditions are covered in our planning guide rather than repeated for Higham Ferrers. Our planning guide sets them out in plain terms, and the council has its own planning and building control pages and a page on conservation areas.
Building Regulations are a separate set of rules from planning. Building Control is told about notifiable work by us, and the opening is built to the rules in force at the time. The council explains its side on the building control page.
Reaching Higham Ferrers for a survey
Heading north, the 24.4 road miles to the town take about 35 minutes in the car. The old railway branch that served the town closed to passengers in 1959 and shut completely in 1969, and today the nearest working station is at Wellingborough, about four miles off. For a survey, the car is all that counts, and it makes the visit simple to plan.
Close neighbours include Rushden, Irthlingborough and Stanwick. Each has its own page, at Rushden, Irthlingborough and Stanwick, and a visit to one can fit a second survey on the same trip. Tell us the street and the room when you get in touch and we will suggest a day.
What a survey in a Higham Ferrers house looks at
We begin the free survey inside the room you want to change. The visit starts with a look upward from where you sit, then continues in the roof space or on the roof, to see what the opening has to cut through. In a historic building that means the covering, the timbers and how the slope looks from the street. In a later house it means the rafter spacing, the fall of a flat roof, the stair and the place where the bathroom fan vents out.
Measurements and photographs follow, then we sketch a couple of layouts with you. After the survey the quote comes fixed and in writing, so it is the figure on the day, and the 10-year workmanship guarantee is also written down. Fitting a single rooflight is quick, and the inside is finished neatly once the glass is in.
Our WhatsApp line, 07880 284133, is the quickest way to begin. The inbox at info@vertexskylightsmiltonkeynes.co.uk and the quote form do the job as well. We come better prepared when you send photographs of the room, and of the roof taken from the garden.
Higham Ferrers, one question at a time
Does the conservation area take in my street in Higham Ferrers?
The council's list includes a conservation area for the town, and the council's map shows where its edge runs. North Northamptonshire Council's planning team can say if your address falls within it and if an Article 4 direction applies. Ask before you pick a frame, because the answer can steer you towards a slimmer conservation-pattern rooflight.
Can a sun tunnel really light a bathroom with no window?
Yes, if the bathroom sits under the roof or near it. Daylight enters at a small dome on the slope, travels down a reflective tube and spreads from a ceiling diffuser. It gives soft light, not a view. Where there is room, a roof window with frosted glass adds air as well. The sun tunnel page compares the two.
My loft window faces a tree. Will a rooflight do better?
It will look at a different part of the sky. A side window looks into the branches, while glass in the slope looks up above them. Straight up is clear, so the leaf cover that darkens the gable has far less say over the light that comes through the roof. We check the shadow on the survey before choosing the position.
How do I get a quote for a Higham Ferrers house?
Give the room you have in mind and your street, by email to info@vertexskylightsmiltonkeynes.co.uk or WhatsApp 07880 284133. We arrange a free survey, then send a fixed written quote that does not change on the day. The quote form is there if you prefer to write it down.
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