Skylights & rooflights in Sherston Stone slates, a long High Street and rooms that need a window up high

Where the council comes in

Sherston falls under Wiltshire Council, and parts of the old village are likely to lie within a conservation area, with a number of listed buildings among them. Putting a rooflight on a listed house requires consent of its own, granted by the council. Inside a conservation area, any slope in view of the road may draw closer attention, so ask Wiltshire Council before you settle on a design. The rules on what is usually allowed, and what to submit when it is not, are set out in our planning guide.

On the front slopes the answer is usually a conservation rooflight. It is framed in slim metal, with one thin bar splitting the glass, and it lies flush with the stone tiles rather than standing proud of them. It looks like the cast-iron rooflights that once lit lofts and outhouses in places like this. Many of them open on a pivot or a winding handle, so you are not choosing between the look of the roof and a window you can use.

Working inside an old roof

Stone-tiled roofs are not built to a standard pattern. The rafters may be irregular, the battens spaced by eye, and the stone itself graded from large tiles at the eaves to small ones at the ridge. Before suggesting a size we inspect the underside from inside the loft, then walk the street to see the slope as neighbours will, and measure the gaps between the rafters. Sometimes a narrower unit that fits between two existing timbers can beat a wider unit that would mean cutting a rafter and framing a trimmer. Where the roof structure does have to be altered, it is trimmed properly, because cutting a fresh hole through the slope is building work, and it must satisfy the regulations. The quote tells you plainly if that applies to your roof, and it shows the opening options for every unit so you can compare them side by side.

The stone tiles around a new unit are lifted carefully, set aside and relaid by the same team around a flashing kit made for the job, so the slope keeps its pattern of courses. By the end of every working day the roof is sealed against weather, and dust sheets protect your floors while the work goes on.

If your Sherston house has a lower range at the back, perhaps an old dairy, a wash house or a single-storey extension, a flat rooflight can brighten it without any visible change at the front. An electric opening one takes cooking steam straight out at ceiling height. The flat roof rooflights page explains how those units are built and how they open.

Bungalows and their hidden middles

Plenty of Sherston homes are bungalows, and a bungalow has a particular weakness: the hall and the inner bathroom have no outside wall. A sun tunnel is a bright, tidy answer. A rigid tube runs up from a small dome in the slope to a diffuser in the ceiling, and it needs no major structural work. For a bathroom that needs steam to clear, a roof window above the shower in an inner room with a loft over it is another route, or a tunnel fitted with a vent kit.

Some bungalows have a bedroom built up into the roof space, and there the roof window can have a second job. Building rules allow it to serve as the escape route from a room beneath the slopes of a bungalow or chalet bungalow, so we check how wide the sash is and how far its lower edge stands above the floor. That gets measured when we visit. Where the house has two full storeys, the picture changes. Its converted loft must have a protected stair, and its roof window then serves for daylight and fresh air alone.

Newer infill houses and extensions are mostly built with flat or shallow roofs at the back. A rear kitchen with a large fixed rooflight can turn hot by mid-afternoon in summer. Swapping it for one that opens, or adding a second that does, lets the heat leave at the highest point. A roof lantern that opens at the top works the same way and gives a taller, more shapely room. For the opening choices in more detail, see fresh air rooflights.

Whichever type of house you have, there is a sensible order to the decision, and it applies as much to a cottage as to a barn. Start with where the heat collects, then choose the height and the way of opening, then look at the cost. What drives the price is covered on the costs page. If you are in nearby Malmesbury or Tetbury, the same advice applies, and the roof window hub is a good place to read about the options.