Skylights and rooflights in North Tawton

North Tawton is a small market town with a long past in wool, and the streets still show it. Around the Square and the lanes that run off it stand cob and stone cottages, some thatched, some slated, and some later fronted in brick or painted render. Cob is the local earth wall, thick and soft, and it gives these houses their deep window reveals and their rounded corners.

Where the town grew with its mills, rows of plain Victorian terraces were built for the people working in them, in stone or brick under slate. Larger Georgian and Victorian houses, a few with a good staircase and tall rooms, sit along the main streets, and farmhouses stand on the edge of town and out in the lanes.

So our opening question is which of these describes your house, because it decides almost everything that follows.

The twentieth century added council housing, bungalows and small private estates on the town's fringes, then newer cul-de-sacs. Barn conversions in the surrounding countryside give a further kind of job: big open roofs with exposed timbers and a lot of new glass wanted in them. So our opening question is which of these describes your house, because it decides almost everything that follows.

Many houses here have also been altered more than once. A cottage may have a rear wing from the nineteenth century, a flat-roofed kitchen from the 1970s and a loft room added later, each with its own ceiling, its own roof timbers and its own idea of where level is. A rooflight has to meet all of that where it lands, and the survey is how we find out what it will meet.

Applications in North Tawton go to West Devon. The historic centre around the Square has older buildings that may sit in a conservation area, and a number of the cottages and farmhouses in and around the town are listed. Check the council's maps for your street, because the boundary decides which rules apply.

Thatched cottages deserve a word of their own. The thatch is part of what makes a building listed or valued, and the council will want to see that a new opening leaves the character of the roof alone. A rear slope, a modest unit and a clear drawing are what get a sensible answer quickly.

Listed status is the bigger hurdle: consent is needed before the outside changes, and cutting into the ceiling or roof timbers can need it too.

An ordinary house will usually be able to take a rooflight under national permitted development, with limits that are the same everywhere in England and are covered in our planning guide. In a conservation area those rights can be removed by an Article 4 direction, so ask before ordering. Listed status is the bigger hurdle: consent is needed before the outside changes, and cutting into the ceiling or roof timbers can need it too.

North Tawton is not inside Dartmoor National Park, though the moor is close enough to see. If your property is further south, towards the moorland edge, check the park boundary with the Dartmoor National Park Authority rather than assuming. The planning and Building Regulations guide for Devon has the wider rules, and conservation rooflights for listed buildings covers the consent route.

Which product is right turns on the house and its roof, and for North Tawton the choices run as follows:

• Cob cottages and listed farmhouses: a conservation rooflight, slim and set low in the slope, where consent allows.
• Mill terraces, loft rooms: a roof window, pivoting in the middle or hung from the top, facing the back.
• Kitchen additions: a roof lantern over the table or island.
• Barn conversions: a run of roof windows between the rafters, positioned to suit the timbers.

In a high barn roof the opposite is true: the shaft is deep and the lining does a lot of work.

Low cottage rooms often have a ceiling only just above head height, so the opening is wide and the shaft shallow, and a small, well-placed unit is better than a large one that dominates the room. In a high barn roof the opposite is true: the shaft is deep and the lining does a lot of work.

Rooms in the roof need thought about summer as well as winter. Slate and tile heat up, and an attic bedroom can become the warmest room in the house by evening. An opening unit set high in the slope lets heat out, and glazing with a solar control coat on south-facing slopes takes the edge off the afternoon. An opening unit adds purge ventilation under Part F, useful in a house with thick walls and few windows.

Where a bedroom is in the roof, an opening unit can also meet the size and position rules to serve as an escape window, a matter we check against Approved Document B at the survey.

We travel out to North Tawton from Exeter, and plan the visit to cover the roof, the room, the loft and anything that would change the finish. We note the gap between slope and ceiling, record the ceiling material, check the rafters from inside where they can be seen, and look at where thatch, a cornice or an old crack might alter the plan.

Access in town is mostly simple, with the Square and its lanes a little tight for a lorry, and out in the lanes and farms the question is the width of the road and where materials can be set down. That is settled at the survey, along with any scaffold or tower, so the day itself runs smoothly. If you can send photographs of the room, the ceiling and the roof beforehand, the first visit is better prepared, though the survey itself is always done in person.

After the visit comes a written price, accepted before work starts. Dust is controlled, the room is cleaned and the job comes with our 10-year workmanship guarantee. For a cottage, farmhouse or barn that wants a visit, begin with the quote form or contact the office at info@brightviewskylightsexeter.co.uk. Round about, we also cover Bow and Okehampton, and everywhere else we work is shown on our coverage map, and the whole service is on the home page.