Skylights and rooflights in Topsham

Topsham grew as a port. Ships unloaded here for centuries, and the trade with the Low Countries in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries left the town with its best known houses: tall brick fronts on the Strand topped with curved Dutch gables, built by merchants who had seen them across the North Sea. Behind and between them sit rendered houses, warehouses turned into homes, and narrow plots that run back from the street towards the water.

Fore Street and the streets off it carry a long run of Georgian and Victorian terraces, many with shops below and living rooms above. Their back additions, lean-tos and rear extensions are where much of the modern building work in the town happens, because the front elevations are protected and the street is tight. Some older cottages are cob or rubble stone under render, which is common across this part of Devon.

So one small town holds almost every kind of rooflight job we do, and we always begin by asking whereabouts in Topsham you live.

Away from the river, the town changes character. Later twentieth century estates spread out towards the edges of Topsham, with semis, bungalows and detached houses built in brick or render under concrete tile, and more recent infill since then. These homes have plasterboard ceilings, regular trussed or rafter roofs and loft spaces that suit roof windows and sun tunnels well.

So one small town holds almost every kind of rooflight job we do, and we always begin by asking whereabouts in Topsham you live.

Exeter City Council has designated a conservation area covering the historic core of Topsham, including the Strand, Fore Street and the streets around them. Inside it, a house can still use the general householder allowance for rooflights, within its limits on projection and height. The council may have taken that allowance away through an Article 4 direction, though, so ask Exeter City Council's planning team whether one covers your street before a design is settled.

Listed buildings are different. Many of the older houses in Topsham are listed, and an outside alteration to one, a rooflight included, cannot go ahead without formal consent. The consent reaches the inside too, because cutting into a historic ceiling or roof structure in a listed house falls under it. Flats and maisonettes, of which there are plenty above the Fore Street shops, cannot use the householder allowance at all, so a rooflight on one needs planning permission.

In practice, conservation officers looking at a slate roof in an old town usually favour a low-profile conservation rooflight, sitting close to the slates with slim frames and a central glazing bar, over a standard roof window on a prominent slope. For the general limits, see our planning and Building Regulations guide, and for the consent process read conservation rooflights for listed buildings.

What suits a house depends on its age and where the glass will sit. Across Topsham's housing the usual choices are these.

• Merchants' houses and listed terraces: one conservation rooflight in the rear slope, sized to suit the slates and the room below.
• Victorian and Georgian terraces with loft rooms: a rear roof window of either the top-hung or centre-pivot type, provided the house is not listed and no Article 4 direction applies.
• Kitchen and garden-room extensions: a lantern or a flat unit standing on a kerb, lined and plastered on the inside.
• Later twentieth century homes: ordinary roof windows for loft conversions, glazed double or triple, with the inner pane laminated, being overhead glass.
• Dark landings and internal bathrooms: a sun tunnel, for places where a full rooflight is not possible or would not be approved.

The glass depends on the room more than on the roof.

Top-floor rooms above the Fore Street shops and in the taller waterside houses can get warm on summer afternoons, because heat rises through the stairwell and gathers under the roof. An opening unit set high in the slope lets that warm air out, and a motor-driven one with a rain sensor can safely stay open on a changeable day. Ventilation of this kind can also serve as the purge allowance for the room under Part F.

The glass depends on the room more than on the roof. A bedroom facing the estuary might take solar control glass to keep afternoon heat down, while a landing that faces north is better with clear double glazing of high performance, letting in as much daylight as the frame size allows.

Whichever product is chosen, the installation follows the current Building Regulations and the Part L heat-loss rules for new and replacement glazing. Removing a complete rooflight, frame and glass, must also be notified, and the Building Control side is ours to handle.

Topsham is a short drive down Topsham Road from Exeter, so a visit is easy to fit in. We study the roof from the pavement or garden, then enter the loft and the room, taking the depth from roof to ceiling, noting the ceiling's material and condition and marking what could show in the finish, from a cornice to an old crack heading towards the planned opening.

Old Topsham has narrow streets and very little parking, so the visit includes planning access: where the van can unload, whether a tower or scaffold is needed and whether it would stand on the pavement. Devon County Council, as highway authority, licenses any scaffold on the highway, and we allow time for it in the programme. For a conservation or listed job, the same visit collects what a planning or consent application will need.

The price comes to you in writing and the work starts only when you agree it. Old houses shed fine plaster dust, so the room is sealed off during the job, left clean afterwards, and the fitting is guaranteed for ten years. To get a visit in the diary, send the quote form, message us through WhatsApp, or use info@brightviewskylightsexeter.co.uk for email. Back on the homepage you will find every service we offer.