Roof Lantern Installation
Flat-roof glazing sized to the room and detailed into the kerb below it.
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Braintree district
Rooflight installation in Bocking
Village absorbed into Braintree, listed stock. What that means for getting glass into a roof here is the whole of this page.
We travel to Bocking
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BockingTown covered
Braintree districtWithin
30Mile radius by road
10Year workmanship guarantee
In Bocking
What we install on Bocking roofs
Flat Roof Rooflight Installation
Flush and kerb-mounted units into single-ply, felt and GRP flat roofs.
View this service →Roof Window Installation
Roof windows trimmed into slate, clay and concrete tile without proud flashing.
View this service →VELUX Window Installation
We install VELUX alongside Fakro, Keylite and Roto roof windows.
View this service →Electric and Opening Rooflights
Actuated opening units, rain sensors and controls, wired and commissioned.
View this service →Energy Efficient Rooflights
Specified on U-value and g-value, not on the brochure photograph.
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The local detail
16 things worth knowing about Bocking roofs
Bocking is administratively part of Braintree and architecturally nothing like it. Bradford Street runs north from Bocking End as one of the longest and best preserved medieval and Georgian streets in Essex, and behind a good many of those brick fronts sits a roof two or three centuries older than the elevation below it. The gap between what the street shows and what the roof actually is decides almost every enquiry from this part of the town. This page covers the roof types Bocking has, what listed status changes about the order the work happens in, and where daylight can sensibly go in a building that is protected from the pavement.
- 01 Bradford Street, and the roofs behind the Georgian fronts
- 02 Crown post roofs, and the timber a rooflight lands beside
- 03 What listed status asks of a Bocking rooflight
- 04 Bocking Church Street, and the deanery end of the village
- 05 Peg tile roofs, and the gauge they were laid to
- 06 Cross wings, and the valley between two ranges
- 07 Outshuts, catslides and the room at the back
- 08 The nineteenth century streets off Bocking End
- 09 Twentieth century Bocking, and where the estates sit
- 10 Flat roofs on the rear additions
- 11 Low ground along the Blackwater at Bocking Mill
- 12 Scaffold against a listed frontage on a through road
- 13 Dark timber, and the light a Bocking room actually keeps
- 14 Which units suit a protected Bocking slope
- 15 Notifying a Bocking installation under the Regulations
- 16 Getting a Bocking job moving
Bradford Street, and the roofs behind the Georgian fronts
Refronting was the fashion of the seventeen hundreds and Bradford Street had the money for it. A merchant with a timber framed house put a brick or rendered classical front on the street elevation, sash windows in regular bays, and a coped verge or a parapet along the top. The frame behind it stayed exactly where it had always been.
The practical consequence for a survey is that the pitch you can read from the pavement is often not the pitch of the roof anyone will be working on. Behind the front range there can be a steeper original roof, a rear wing running at a different angle, and a valley where the two meet. Nothing about the size or position of a unit is settled until somebody has been in the roof space and established which of those sits over the room in question.
Crown post roofs, and the timber a rooflight lands beside
The medieval roofs here are not rafters and purlins in the Victorian sense. A crown post roof carries a tie beam across the building, a post standing on it, a collar purlin running the length of the roof, and pairs of common rafters pegged at the apex with no ridge board at all. The assembly works as a frame and individual members are doing more than they appear to be doing.
So an opening in one is designed rather than trimmed. Where a common rafter can be interrupted, it is interrupted between historic principals and its load taken back to them. Where it cannot, the unit is sized to a gap that already exists. This is slower work than a Victorian roof and it is entirely routine on the right building.
What listed status asks of a Bocking rooflight
Listed building consent is granted by Braintree District Council and it is a separate matter from planning permission. It covers anything affecting the special interest of the building, inside as well as out, and forming an opening through a historic roof sits squarely inside that.
An application wants drawings, a description of the unit, and an explanation of why the position chosen does least harm. In practice consent is considerably easier to obtain on a rear slope, on a later addition, or in a roof that has already been re-covered than on an original plane facing the street. The sequence matters: consent first, order second, install third.
On a listed building the application is easiest to win when the position chosen is the one that can barely be seen.
Bocking Church Street, and the deanery end of the village
A mile north of Bocking End the character changes again. Church Street is the older and quieter half, gathered around St Mary’s and the deanery with the windmill on the rise behind. The buildings are lower and more domestic than Bradford Street: timber framed cottages, colourwashed render, weatherboarding on the outbuildings, roofs at forty five degrees and steeper carrying tall brick stacks.
A steep pitch helps. Water leaves quickly, a flashing sits in a self draining position, and a roof window reads as a small feature rather than an interruption. What a steep pitch takes away is usable head height near the eaves, so the position that actually works is usually higher up the slope than the homeowner first proposes, closer to the purlin than to the wall plate.
Peg tile roofs, and the gauge they were laid to
The historic covering across Bocking is handmade clay peg tile, hung on oak pegs over riven or sawn battens and laid to a gauge that drifts along the roof because the tiles themselves vary in size. No two courses are quite the same depth, which is exactly why these roofs look the way they do.
Stripping back around an opening is therefore slow, careful work with a great many tiles set aside for re-laying. Old peg tiles break when they are handled and a proportion of any batch will not go back, so salvaged stock in the right size and colour range is sourced before the roof is opened rather than after. The weathering is lead soakers and an apron dressed course by course, sized to the gauge actually found on that roof.
Cross wings, and the valley between two ranges
Bocking’s larger houses grew as an open hall with a cross wing at one end or both, so plenty of roofs here are two ranges meeting at right angles with a valley running between them. That valley is the lowest and hardest working part of the whole roof.
A rooflight wants to stay well clear of it. Every drop of water off both slopes above passes through the channel, and an upstand set close in narrows the flow at the exact point where leaves gather. The working rule is a full course of clear covering between the unit and the valley boards, which usually pushes the position up towards the ridge rather than down into the corner where the dark room happens to be.
Outshuts, catslides and the room at the back
Behind a great many Bocking houses is a lean-to outshut, either under a continuation of the main slope or under a shallower roof of its own. It is where the kitchen ended up, it faces a garden wall a couple of metres away, and it is dark for most of the year.
Where the catslide is original and steep enough to take a unit, a roof window in it lights the room properly and reads as entirely ordinary from the garden. Where the outshut has been rebuilt with a flat roof, and many have, a flush rooflight on a kerb gives the better result because it faces the whole sky rather than one bearing of it. Either way the conversation about a rear elevation is far shorter than the one about a front.
The nineteenth century streets off Bocking End
Silk and crape weaving brought industry to Bocking in the eighteen hundreds and brought terraced housing with it, on the streets running off Bocking End and down towards the river. These houses are smaller and plainer than the merchant stock and most of them carry no listing, though a number sit inside the conservation area boundary.
The form is familiar across Essex. Two storeys, a shallow rear outshut, hand cut rafters at roughly four hundred centres, Welsh slate or plain clay tile originally, and concrete interlocking tile wherever the roof has since been re-covered. These are the Bocking roofs where the ordinary range applies with no heritage discussion attached, and a single roof window in one is usually a day’s work.
Twentieth century Bocking, and where the estates sit
North and west of the old village, Bocking runs into interwar housing along Convent Lane and Church Lane, then into post-war and later estates towards Panfield Lane. The roofs change completely. Hipped concrete or clay tile on the nineteen thirties stock, purlins strutted off a spine wall, then trussed rafter roofs from the mid sixties onwards.
A truss is an engineered component and its webs carry load in tension and compression, so units go in the clear gap between trusses rather than through them. That normally caps a single opening at something under six hundred millimetres wide. Two units in adjacent bays deliver the same glass area with none of the structural argument, and they usually look more deliberate from the garden.
Flat roofs on the rear additions
Rear kitchens and side infills across Bocking are flat roofed, in felt, single ply or GRP depending on the decade, and most of them are collecting run-off from the main slope above as well as their own rainfall.
The kerb under a flush unit wants one hundred and fifty millimetres from the finished surface to the top of the upstand, and on a small roof taking water off a large one that figure is a floor rather than a target. The covering is dressed up all four sides of the kerb and terminated under the unit. Where a survey finds water still standing forty eight hours after rain, the fall gets sorted before any glass is ordered, in that order, every time.
Low ground along the Blackwater at Bocking Mill
The river runs through Bocking below Bradford Street, past the mill, and the ground either side of it is low, damp and slow to dry out. Buildings there carry more moisture in the fabric than the ones up on the higher ground by the church.
That shows up in two places at rooflight level. Timber near the eaves in a damp building is more often soft where it bears, which is found by probing at survey rather than assumed from the age of the house. And a cold roof void over a room in a damp house needs its ventilation path kept open once an opening has been formed, because a new trimmed opening is very easily made to block the run of air from eaves to ridge. Both are cheap to allow for and awkward to discover later.
Scaffold against a listed frontage on a through road
Bradford Street is narrow, it carries traffic, the footway is thin and many of the houses have no side access at all. That combination shapes the programme more often than the roof does.
Where scaffold has to stand on the footway or in the carriageway, a licence from the highway authority is required and it takes time to obtain. Standards cannot be tied into a listed elevation casually, so ties are taken through window openings or the scaffold is designed to stand free. Where there is no side gate, materials and waste travel through the house on boards and under sheets along a route agreed before anyone starts. All of it is priced at survey rather than discovered on the morning.
Dark timber, and the light a Bocking room actually keeps
An old interior here does something a modern room does not. Exposed oak, boarded floors and deep coloured lime plaster absorb a large share of the light that arrives, so a rooflight that lights a white plastered kitchen looks noticeably weaker in a beamed one.
Two responses work together. Push the glazing area towards the upper end of the fifteen to twenty per cent of floor area rule, because the surfaces below are not going to help you. And splay the internal reveal outwards towards the room so the light spreads across the ceiling instead of landing as a hard rectangle on the floor. On a deep historic build-up that reveal can be three hundred millimetres or more, which makes the splay worth more here than almost anywhere else in the county.
Which units suit a protected Bocking slope
On anything visible from the street the profile of the unit is doing the persuading, and the difference between an approval and a refusal is usually a few millimetres of frame.
| Where the opening sits | What it usually takes | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Listed front slope on Bradford Street | Slim cast conservation unit, flush, central glazing bar | Reads as a historic roof light from the pavement |
| Rear slope with no public view | Standard roof window in the correct flashing kit | Effect on the setting is limited |
| Rebuilt outshut or later flat roof | Flush fixed or opening flat rooflight on a kerb | The fabric being altered is modern |
| Estate housing beyond the old village | Roof window sized between trusses | No heritage constraint, structure sets the width |
Products from VELUX, Fakro, Keylite and Roto all appear in these forms. The cast profile that suits the first row is covered in full on the conservation rooflight page.
Notifying a Bocking installation under the Regulations
Fitting a new rooflight, or replacing a unit that has reached the end of its working life, is notifiable work under the Building Regulations in England. Part L covers thermal performance, Part K applies where there is a risk of falling, and Part B comes in where a roof window serves as a means of escape from a converted room.
Sunspire handles that notification as part of the job, through Braintree District Council or an approved inspector. On a listed building the two processes run alongside each other and they can pull in opposite directions, because Part L wants a low U-value and the conservation officer wants a slim historic profile. Both can be satisfied. The way through is agreeing the unit with both parties before it is ordered rather than afterwards.
Getting a Bocking job moving
Sunspire travels to Bocking from Chelmsford, comfortably inside the thirty miles by road the business works to, and covers the wider district alongside Braintree itself. The rest of the county is set out on the areas we cover page.
The quickest start is two photographs and a rough measurement. One of the roof from the garden showing the covering and the slope, one of the ceiling inside showing where the light is wanted, and the approximate dimensions of the room. If the building is listed or sits in the conservation area, say so in the first email, because it changes the sequence rather than the answer. A range comes back by return, and a fixed written figure follows a survey. What drives the difference between the two is set out on the costs page.
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We start with the building, the covering and the slope. Then we tell you what will suit it, and what it will cost, as a fixed written number.
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