Skylights and rooflights in Okehampton

Okehampton is a market town that grew around its castle and its main street. The old core runs along Fore Street and the lanes beside it, where narrow stone and rendered houses stand shoulder to shoulder, many of them with shops or former shops on the ground floor. The stone is local, and granite from the moor is never far away in the walls, the lintels and the garden boundaries.

The arrival of the railway in the later nineteenth century brought a new wave of building: terraces of stone and brick for workers, and larger villas with decent gardens on the better ground. Some of those terraces still run in tidy rows beside the streets that lead up from the centre. Further out, interwar and postwar housing spreads in estates, followed by bungalows and, more recently, new developments on the edges of the town beside the main road.

Each of these has its own demands on a rooflight, so we start by asking what your house is built of.

Beyond the town there are farmhouses and cottages of cob and stone, some reached by lanes that climb towards the moor. Their walls can be very thick, and the windows sit deep in them. Barn conversions with large open roof spaces are part of the picture too.

Each of these has its own demands on a rooflight, so we start by asking what your house is built of. A farmhouse with walls over half a metre thick and a 1990s estate home with a trussed roof are both Okehampton houses, but the openings we cut in them have almost nothing in common, from the way the roof is trimmed to the depth of the finished reveal.

Planning in the town itself belongs to West Devon Borough Council. Dartmoor National Park Authority has planning control inside the park, and the park lies close to the south of Okehampton, so a house on that side of town, or any house on the moorland lanes, needs its position checked against the boundary rather than assumed. National parks are Article 2(3) land, where some permitted development rights are restricted, and the authority will tell you which apply.

For a house outside the park, householder rights normally cover a rooflight. The two figures people ask about are 150mm, how far it may stand out from the slope, and 1.7m, the height above the floor that a side-facing one must reach before it can open. Flats and maisonettes have none of these rights, so a rooflight in one needs planning permission.

The historic centre of Okehampton has a conservation area, and the rights can be curtailed there by an Article 4 direction. Listed buildings are separate: consent has to be granted before a rooflight goes into a listed house, and that includes work to the ceiling and roof timbers. With a slate roof facing the street, the usual solution is a slim conservation rooflight on the back slope, which is easier to justify and sits more quietly on the roof.

The general limits are in our guide to planning and building control across Devon, and the conservation rooflights page covers the products made for protected roofs. If you are unsure, a short email to the planning team with a photo and a sketch saves a great deal of time, and we can help you word it from what we measure at the survey.

The best product depends on the walls and the roof as much as on the room. Some matches that suit Okehampton:

Stone cottages and farmhouses on the moor edge usually suit a small conservation rooflight set flush with the slate and sized to the rafter spacing. Victorian terraces and villas are better served by a roof window lighting a loft room or a landing, on the rear slope if the front faces the street.

In a bathroom or kitchen we normally choose polyurethane, which handles damp better than bare pine.

Barn conversions can take a row of roof windows, or one large flat rooflight over the open space, positioned with the timbers in mind. Kitchen extensions suit a roof lantern or a plainer flat rooflight set on a kerb, with the inside plastered. Postwar and newer homes generally need only a standard roof window in the loft, or a sun tunnel where the roof space is too shallow.

A centre-pivot roof window, finished in painted pine or in white polyurethane, suits most loft rooms. A top-hung window gives more headroom at the sill in a steep roof. In a bathroom or kitchen we normally choose polyurethane, which handles damp better than bare pine.

An energy efficient rooflight is worth choosing in a town that sees this much cold. Laminated glass on the inner pane makes sense above a bed or a seat. A brand-new rooflight, with its frame and glass, falls under Part L and has to be notified, which is part of our job.

Okehampton lies off the A30, so reaching the town from Exeter is simple, and nearby villages, including North Tawton and Chagford, are close enough that one visit can cover more than one enquiry. Outside, we study the roof; indoors and in the loft we measure from the slates down to the ceiling, and record the ceiling material and where the timbers run.

Fore Street and the lanes around it are tight for vans and ladders, and some moorland lanes are narrower still, so access is part of the survey. The survey settles the spot where the van can unload, any need for a tower or scaffold, and whether permission for the highway must be sought first. On the estates, the usual question is the length of a carry from the road to the house.

A thick-walled house needs a quote that says how deep the reveal will be and what it is lined with, and that is what you receive in writing before we start. Dust is controlled, we tidy the room before we leave, and our workmanship carries a ten-year guarantee. If you would like a visit, the quote form is the simplest way in, though WhatsApp or a message to info@brightviewskylightsexeter.co.uk reaches us just as well. Our homepage has the full picture of what we install, and the areas page lists the other places we cover.