Wingrave estate cottages open to skylights or rooflights
Wingrave is a Buckinghamshire village with a long name in the records and a distinctive look on the ground: estate cottages built for Mentmore employees, a half-timbered manor house, and gardens where the sky is the only open view.
Estate cottages and the houses that came after
Wingrave has been written down for a very long time. Domesday Book has it as Withungrave, and a record of 1163 spells it Wiungraua. The village sits within the civil parish of Wingrave with Rowsham, which also takes in the hamlet of Rowsham, and the Manor of Burbage lies inside the parish. Eight and a half centuries of spelling have left a village that looks settled and a little Victorian, and two kinds of house set most of the questions a roof has to answer.
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Tudor Revival cottages from the Rothschild estate
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Extended houses with gardens behind
Around the recreation ground and in other corners of the village stand houses and cottages in a Tudor Revival style, put up by Hannah de Rothschild in the nineteenth century as homes for estate employees. They carry her cypher, H de R, and they stayed with the Mentmore Estate until well into the twentieth century. They are sought after now, which is a good reason to treat the roof with care. Upper rooms under a cottage roof are often snug and short of light. A slim conservation rooflight stays close to the slope, leaves the roofline as the builders drew it, and still lets an attic bedroom see the sky.
Houses of varying sizes sit beside the cottages, and a house with room behind it invites an extension. A kitchen pushed out into the garden gains floor space, then loses daylight, because the side glass now looks at a fence or a boundary tree. The roof of the new room is the part nobody has built anything in front of. Glass set into the roof, either a flat rooflight or a lantern, lights the whole room from the one direction a hedge cannot reach, while a roof window serves a loft in the same way.
Three Wingrave rooms where the sky does better than the window
A kitchen behind a boundary fence
The garden doors are right there, and so is the fence.
Sideways
A cottage kitchen is often the smallest room in the house, and the first one a family wants to enlarge. The extension goes out towards the garden boundary. A close-boarded fence stands a few steps from the glass, and from mid-afternoon it throws a shadow across the worktop.
The window is not at fault. A window sees what is level with it, and what is level with it here is timber and a neighbour's shed. Where people eat, in the part of the room furthest from the garden doors, nothing else supplies daylight.
Straight up
Set over the dining end, a flat rooflight brings daylight down from the sky, above the line of the fence. The unit is set on an upstand and the glass falls slightly so water runs off, and the plasterwork inside is finished off so the opening blends into the ceiling line. In a long room, two units side by side work well, while a square room does better with one larger pane.
The point is simple. Side windows look at fences, and the roof looks up. Straight up is clear.
Before a survey, a short list of questions saves time on the day and makes the quote more exact. These are the ones we ask a Wingrave kitchen first.
What to settle before we visit the kitchen
- Which end of the room is dimmest, and at what hour?
- Is the roof flat, pitched, or a mixture of both?
- Should the glass open to let air through?
- Is the house in the village conservation area?
- Where does the worktop or dining table sit?
An extension shaded by a boundary tree
Leaves are lovely in June and a nuisance in November.
Sideways
Village gardens grow trees, and the tree that was a sapling when the extension was drawn is now taller than the house. Its branches lean over the roof, its crown blocks the low sun, and the glass wall of the extension spends the morning in green shade.
Cutting the tree is rarely simple. It may belong to a neighbour, or carry a preservation order, and it is often the reason the garden is pleasant at all. The room has to cope with the tree rather than the other way round.
Straight up
Both a lantern and a flat rooflight take their light from a steep angle overhead, where most of the sky stays open even beside a tall tree. Daylight arrives from above the lowest branches and spreads down the walls into the room, so the far corner brightens as well as the middle.
A lantern also adds height. On a ceiling with room to spare it changes the proportions of the space, and it lets the evening sky in as well as the noon sun. See the roof lantern pages for the options.
The drawing below compares the same room lit through a side window and then lit from overhead.
A landing with a bedroom on every side
The middle of the house is the part that never sees outside.
Sideways
In a two-storey cottage the landing often sits between bedrooms, with no outside wall of its own. It has no window to blame. In daylight hours the stair gets whatever spills from the hall below, which is not much, and anyone carrying washing up the stairs does it by switch.
The bedrooms either side cannot lend a hand. If one of them faces a tree, its light is dim, and a borrowed light is worth very little.
Straight up
A sun tunnel works from a small roof dome, passing daylight down a mirrored tube through the loft and through a diffuser fitted to the landing ceiling. There is nothing to wire and no floor space is lost. The dome sits on the roof and looks at open sky, so a tree beside the house takes far less of its light than it takes from a side window.
The rules on glazing in existing homes apply to rooflights as well as windows, and the figures are below so that you can compare products with confidence.
Heat-loss ceilings for new roof glazing in a lived-in house
- 1.4 W/m²K
- for a pitched-roof window, or reach WER band B instead
- 2.2 W/m²K
- for a flat rooflight or lantern on an extension
Wingrave's conservation area and the council
Buckinghamshire Council takes planning applications from Wingrave, and its general guidance is on the planning and building pages. The council's list of conservation areas in Buckinghamshire has an entry called Wingrave, so it is worth finding out early whether your house falls inside it. The council can supply the boundary map and the rules that go with it.
A conservation area, taken alone, leaves permitted development in place. An Article 4 direction can, and a call to the council's planners will settle whether one covers your street. The planning guide spells out, in plain words, the general conditions that govern rooflights. Before the roof is touched on a listed building, consent for that work has to be in hand.
Building Regulations are a separate matter. The council has a building control page, and a registered building control approver can be used instead. Where the work is notifiable, we handle the notification and install to the current regulations.
Which roof suits which glass in Wingrave
The two kinds of building in the village need different answers, and the choice runs from the roof outwards.
A steep Tudor Revival gable, with its tiles and its timber detailing, wants a frame that sits close to the covering and disappears from the street. A conservation-style unit with a slim bar suits it well, and so does a small roof window set between rafters. The aim is that someone walking past the recreation ground sees a house, not a hole in the roof.
A flat-roofed kitchen or garden room is the opposite case. Here the roof has no pattern to keep, and the upstand and the glass are chosen for the room beneath. A lantern gives height and a feeling of space. A flat rooflight is lower and neater. A walk-on unit suits a roof that doubles as a terrace, though that is a different conversation. VELUX windows are an option on a pitched roof where the existing rafters allow it.
Where the glass is large or the roof is exposed, the quality of the glazing counts. Double glazing with a coated pane keeps the room comfortable, and the energy figures above are the minimum, not the aim.
The drive south from Milton Keynes
Wingrave is 18.0 miles south of Milton Keynes by road, about 24 minutes at the wheel. A survey over that distance is a morning or an afternoon job, not a day out, and we look at the roof in daylight from inside and outside.
Wingrave lies outside the Chilterns National Landscape, which leaves conservation and listing as the designation questions to ask. The ordinary route is the simplest one: tell us what room is dark, we look at the roof, and we write the answer down.
If your house is one of the estate cottages, mention it when you get in touch. Use the survey to learn how the roof is built, which way the eaves run and where the rafters lie.
What the survey looks at in an older cottage
Houses built for estate staff in the nineteenth century were built to last, and that is good news for anyone fitting new glass. The survey checks the timbers and how the rafters were set out before any opening is drawn. None of them was planned with a roof window in mind, so every opening is framed around the structure that is really there.
At the survey we measure the gap between rafters, read the pitch, check how deep the roof void is, and look at what lies below: a bedroom, a stair, a cupboard. It also checks the slope that faces the street, because that is the one a neighbour or a conservation officer will see first.
For a loft that is being turned into a room, the survey also covers the stair and the escape route, because the Building Regulations have a view on both. On a taller house a protected stair is still required, because a roof window cannot replace it, and we bring that up early, before anything is ordered.
Once the survey is done, the quote arrives in writing and the price stays as written when we turn up. Where the work needs notifying, we report it to Building Control, and we finish the inside neatly; the 10-year workmanship guarantee is given in writing.
Booking a free survey in Wingrave
The quickest way in is WhatsApp on 07880 284133. Email to info@vertexskylightsmiltonkeynes.co.uk works too, and so does the quote form. Say which room is dark, which way the roof faces, and what stands in front of the window. To get going, send two photographs: one inside the room, one of the roof taken from the lawn or patio.
We install and replace rooflights, roof windows, lanterns and sun tunnels, and a village shop or workshop is as welcome as a house. Expect the work to take a day or two, with the room left clean at the end. You can read more about how we work on the services page.
Wingrave roofs, answered one by one
Is a rooflight allowed on a Tudor Revival cottage in Wingrave?
It depends on the house and its status. the council's conservation list has an entry for Wingrave, and listed buildings need consent. The council's planners can say which one applies to your street; our planning guide explains the permitted development route.
Does a rooflight make a difference in a kitchen that a tree keeps in shade?
Yes, because it takes light from overhead rather than from the side. Either a flat rooflight or a lantern catches the sky above the branches. Before any quote is written, we study the tree, how high the ceiling is and which way the roof faces.
What is the distance to Wingrave, and how soon can a visit happen?
Wingrave lies south on the road out of Milton Keynes, a trip of 18.0 miles that takes around 24 minutes. Message us, and a free survey is booked for a time that suits you.
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