Skylights and rooflights in Newbold Verdon

Newbold Verdon is a Leicestershire village and a civil parish too. The parish takes in Newbold Heath to the north and Brascote to the south. In the itinerary of 1280, Newbold, Brascote, Naneby and Barlestone answered collectively as one village, with 80 acres of woodland and a vineyard between them. That is a long way back, and it is a reminder that a house here may stand on a plot that has been lived on for centuries, even if the building itself is younger.

Cob Cottage is probably the oldest remaining home in the village, dating from 1650. If its walls are true cob, of earth, clay and straw, a house made that way has its own demands. The walls move gently, they dislike being wet, and a new opening in the roof above them has to be fixed to what is solid rather than what is merely there. We say so at the first visit, and we say it plainly: some of these houses suit a rooflight beautifully, and some want a more careful answer first.

In 1794 six cottages were built for the poor of the parish, paid for by benefaction money, and their occupants were allocated the use of ten acres of land at the time of the enclosure. The record does not say what roofs those cottages wear today, so we read each one on the day. Houses of that type tend to be small, with short slopes and not much roof to spare, and in terms of daylight that points towards modest answers. A single narrow roof window, or a sun tunnel sending light down a tube to an inner landing, leaves most of the slope as it was.

Why a short slope changes the sums

On a long roof you can put the window almost anywhere. On a short one the choices narrow quickly: the frame cannot overlap the ridge, the flashing needs room above and below, and the opening has to leave rafters either side. A VELUX size code gives the width first (the letter) and then the height (the digits), so the code on a small window already tells you its proportions. Choosing the size is the work of the survey, not a catalogue decision.

Age also changes how we protect what is already there. Before the first cut, dust sheets go down inside and the loft contents are lifted clear. Slates or tiles come off in the order they went on and are stacked so they go back in the same pattern. On an old roof, the tidy way of working matters as much as the glass, because an old house tends to hold on to the marks of every visitor.

Planning matters here are handled by Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council. Usually a house here can go ahead with a rooflight and no application, because Class C, a 2015 permitted-development allowance, applies. It asks that the glass stands within 150mm of the slope, stays below the roof's top edge, and, on a slope facing sideways, is obscured and fixed unless anything that opens is above 1.7m. Flats and maisonettes never had those householder rights.

The planning register shows a conservation area called Newbold Verdon, designated on 14 November 1989 and whose boundary lies only 40 metres from the village centre point. It records ten listed buildings inside: one at Grade I, which is the top tier and reserved for buildings of exceptional interest, and nine at Grade II. Class C survives inside the boundary unless the council has withdrawn it through an Article 4 direction, and the council keeps the record of where those apply. Listed buildings are firmer still: consent under the listing regime has to come before any rooflight, however small.

We run a simple routine. Before we quote, we check your address against the register, then ask the council whether any Article 4 direction touches the property. Where the house is listed, we tell you up front and explain what consent involves, and the choice is yours. If it is not listed and not restricted, we carry on to the survey with a clear conscience.

The second hurdle is Building Regulations, which any new roof opening meets. A notifiable job has its notice sent by us to council building control or to a registered approver. For energy, Part L expects an existing home's roof window to achieve 1.4 W/m²K, with WER band B also accepted, and a rooflight 2.2. Our specification follows those numbers, so the product and the paperwork agree.

Fitted in a conservation area, a conservation rooflight is the choice most likely to be welcomed. It sits flush with a slim frame, typically carrying one central bar, and seen from the lane it is a detail in the roof, not a feature of it. Not every house in the area needs one. A rear slope that no street sees can take an ordinary unit, provided the house is not listed.

Newbold Verdon began as an agricultural centre and grew in size during the 1850s with the expansion of coal mining in the area. That industry has now ceased, leaving the village as a commuter place serving Leicester, 9.5 miles to the east, and Hinckley, 8.5 miles to the south. It sits on the B582 between Barlestone and Desford, and 4 miles east of the small market town of Market Bosworth. The map records no station inside 2km, so road and bus make the village what it is.

A mill stood in Mill Lane, a windmill brought from Syston in 1812 was put up near what is now the Windmill Inn, and a third mill stood in Desford Road. Those buildings tell you something useful about the village: it has been rebuilt, extended and rearranged more than once, so the roofs you meet on a single road may come from three or four different centuries. We treat each one on its merits.

Where people commute, the house often becomes a place to do other things too. A back bedroom turns into an office, a loft into a spare room, a garage into a utility space with no window at all. These are the jobs where a skylight earns its keep. A bright office needs a roof window with the right glass for the aspect, so that a monitor does not fight a low sun. A loft guest room needs a window that opens and that is reachable from the floor. A windowless utility room, with a roof above it, can take a flat rooflight set into a proper kerb, which is the raised frame the glass sits on.

The edges of the parish deserve a mention too. Newbold Heath lies to the north and Brascote to the south, and a house out at either end may stand on a bigger plot than one in the middle of the village. A larger plot can mean more scope for a single-storey extension, and with an extension comes a flat roof that wants a rooflight. We are as happy to survey a house at Brascote as one on the main road.

Behind older houses, a rear extension is another place the daylight runs thin. A roof lantern lifts the ceiling and lets light drop in from all four sides, which suits a kitchen that has grown beyond what one window can serve. We look at the junction with the old wall first, because that is where a lantern either looks right or looks added on.

Surveys cost nothing, and what you get afterwards is a fixed quote on paper, with the workmanship guaranteed for a decade. With two B-roads, the 582 and the 585, crossing the parish, getting to Newbold Verdon from Leicester is straightforward, and a photo sent to us on WhatsApp helps us arrive with the right questions.