Roof Lantern Installation
Flat-roof glazing sized to the room and detailed into the kerb below it.
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North Essex
Rooflight installation in Colchester
Roman town, very mixed stock, at the radius edge. What that means for getting glass into a roof here is the whole of this page.
We travel to Colchester
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North EssexWithin
30Mile radius by road
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In Colchester
What we install on Colchester 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 Colchester roofs
Colchester has been continuously built on for two thousand years, and the roofs show it. A single walk from the Dutch Quarter to Stanway passes timber frame at fifty degrees, Georgian fronts hiding much older structures behind them, Victorian slate laid for the works and the garrison, postwar concrete tile at half that pitch, and trussed rafters on estates finished this century. Very little of it can be generalised, which is why the survey here starts with what is actually on the roof rather than with a product.
This page works through the constraints that a Colchester address actually brings: the historic core and the consents inside it, the coverings a survey usually finds, the structures under them, and how a day is planned at the far end of the area covered. Sunspire travels here from Chelmsford, as it does to every town on the areas we cover list, and never claims a shop front in a town it drives to.
- 01 A Roman street grid, and the roofs above it
- 02 The earthquake of 1884, and the roofs rebuilt after it
- 03 The Dutch Quarter, and roofs laid out by eye
- 04 Listed buildings in the walled town, and the least invasive design
- 05 The town wall, and what a scaffold may not stand on
- 06 Permitted development in the city, and the two things that remove it
- 07 New Town, and the terraces built beside the garrison
- 08 The four coverings a Colchester survey usually finds
- 09 Original cast rooflights in the Lexden attics
- 10 Monkwick, Greenstead and the postwar concrete tile
- 11 Highwoods and Stanway, and what a modern truss will give you
- 12 Converted barracks, and who consents to work on that roof
- 13 Shared houses near the university, and the escape the Regulations ask for
- 14 Flat roofs on the Hythe side, and proving the fall first
- 15 At the far end of the coverage, and how a Colchester day is planned
- 16 Notification, and how a Colchester enquiry runs
A Roman street grid, and the roofs above it
The walled town still follows the Roman layout. Long straight streets, short cross streets, deep narrow plots running back from a frontage that stands hard on the pavement. That pattern is fifteen hundred years older than any roof standing on it, and it is the thing that dictates most of the practical decisions.
Deep plots produce long ranges with rooms in the middle that no wall window can reach, which is exactly the condition a rooflight answers better than anything else. They also produce buildings with no side access, so material either goes through the property or comes over the roof from the street. Frontage work in the centre needs a licence and a suspended parking bay, and on some of the narrower lanes it needs a plan for how a delivery vehicle turns.
The earthquake of 1884, and the roofs rebuilt after it
On an April morning in 1884 an earthquake centred a few miles south east of the town shook Colchester and the villages around it hard enough to bring chimney stacks down and shake covering loose across a wide area. It remains the most damaging British earthquake on record.
The consequence for anyone opening a roof here is that a great deal of apparently original fabric is not. Stacks were rebuilt, slopes were stripped and re-laid, and Victorian tile went back onto structures a great deal older than the covering. So the age of the frontage predicts the age of the roof far less reliably in Colchester than it does elsewhere in Essex, and a survey checks the battens, the fixings and the timber rather than reading the date off the brickwork.
The Dutch Quarter, and roofs laid out by eye
The lanes north of the High Street, running down the hill towards Middleborough and the Colne, carry the densest run of sixteenth and seventeenth century timber framed houses in the town. Steep pitches, handmade plain clay tile, jettied frontages, and roofs that step down the slope in short independent lengths.
Open one up and any drawing becomes a suggestion. Rafters are hand cut from irregular stock, spacings wander between three hundred and fifty and six hundred millimetres within a single slope, timbers are cranked, and the plane of the roof follows the timber rather than a string line. Standard unit widths that assume four hundred or six hundred centres will often not drop between two adjacent rafters without trimming, and a frame set true will not sit flush to a slope that is not. Both are settled by measuring the real opening once the covering is back, which is why a survey on this kind of house includes lifting tiles.
Listed buildings in the walled town, and the least invasive design
Listed building consent is a separate permission from planning, it covers the interior as much as the exterior, and on a Colchester town house it is usually the historic roof structure rather than the appearance that a conservation officer is most protective of.
The proposal that gets through is the one that changes least. A unit sized to sit between existing rafters, with no principal timber cut, no purlin notched, nothing that could not be taken out again and the slope made good. Rear slopes are a shorter conversation than street elevations, and a modest unit in a sensible place is a far shorter one than a wide opening trimmed through a seventeenth century roof. The point of settling this early is that it changes the product, not just the paperwork.
The town wall, and what a scaffold may not stand on
Stretches of the Roman and medieval town wall survive along Priory Street, Vineyard Street and up towards Balkerne Hill, and properties back onto them. The wall is a scheduled monument, which is a stronger designation than listing and is administered separately.
For a rooflight that has one very practical effect. Nothing bears on the wall, nothing is fixed into it, and no scaffold base or ladder foot goes against it, so access to a rear slope on one of those plots has to be designed rather than assumed. The alternative is usually a tower standing clear on the property’s own ground, or a route through the building. Establishing that at survey stage saves an expensive conversation on the morning of the install.
Where a plot backs onto scheduled fabric, the access method is designed at survey rather than decided on site.
Permitted development in the city, and the two things that remove it
For most Colchester houses, a rooflight is permitted development. The conditions are specific: the unit must not project more than one hundred and fifty millimetres beyond the plane of the existing roof slope, and it must not stand higher than the highest part of the roof.
Two things withdraw that. An Article 4 direction, which is commonly used inside conservation areas to bring rooflight work back under planning control, and the property type, because those rights never applied to flats or maisonettes in the first place. A third, on the newer estates at Stanway and Myland, is a planning condition attached to the original consent that restricts alterations to the roof. All three are checked before anything is ordered, and all three are quick to check.
New Town, and the terraces built beside the garrison
South east of the centre, the grid of Victorian terraces around Wimpole Road and Artillery Street went up for the engineering works and for a town with a large permanent garrison. Two storey brick, Welsh slate on the main range, a single storey rear outshot behind, and a small back yard with an alley behind that.
The dark room in this house type is always the outshot, and a flat rooflight over it is among the highest value moves available. The detail that decides it is the abutment, because the outshot roof meets the rear wall of the main range and both the covering and the upstand have to rise up that wall and terminate in a flashing chased into a brick joint. The kerb has to hold its hundred and fifty millimetres above the finished surface at the wall end as well as at the eaves, which on a roof that already falls away from the house is the part people underestimate.
The four coverings a Colchester survey usually finds
The flashing kit is chosen by what is on the roof, not by what is convenient, and in a town with this range of stock that decision is made on site rather than in an office.
| Covering | Where it turns up | What the opening needs |
|---|---|---|
| Handmade plain clay tile | Dutch Quarter, the older core, village edges | Soakers dressed between courses, salvage sorted and re-laid |
| Welsh slate | New Town, the Victorian streets, school and church buildings | Low profile kit, nails cut, perimeter re-fixed with tingles |
| Interlocking concrete tile | Monkwick, Greenstead, Shrub End, Prettygate | Deep profile kit matched to the tile depth |
| Single ply, felt or GRP | Rear additions, garage decks, the Hythe side | Membrane dressed up a kerb and terminated under the unit |
Original cast rooflights in the Lexden attics
The large Victorian and Edwardian villas along Lexden Road frequently already have daylight in the roof. A servant’s attic or a rear range was lit by a small cast iron rooflight sitting flush in the slope, and a good many of those units are still there, single glazed, painted over repeatedly, and letting a fair amount of heat out.
Replacing one is a favourable job, because the opening exists, the trimming exists, and the visual precedent is already established. A modern conservation rooflight is built to the same proportions: a slim dark frame sitting close to the plane of the slope with a central glazing bar, but with a sealed unit behind it. Where the villa sits inside a designated area, that continuity is usually the argument that carries the application.
Monkwick, Greenstead and the postwar concrete tile
The postwar estates ring the town on almost every side, and structurally they are the most consistent housing Colchester has. Cut roofs on the earlier phases with purlins and struts landing on internal walls, interlocking concrete tile at somewhere between twenty two and thirty degrees, and a cold roof with quilt at ceiling level.
Two things matter when a roof window goes into one. The purlin is frequently exactly where the opening was drawn, so the position is confirmed from inside the loft before anything is ordered. And the reveal below the window connects the room to the rafter zone, so insulation packed tight against the underside of the covering there will close the ventilation path. The detail is a fifty millimetre clear air gap held above the insulation across the full width of the trimmed opening. It disappears behind plasterboard, which is precisely why it gets missed.
Highwoods and Stanway, and what a modern truss will give you
The estates built from the eighties onward at Highwoods, Mile End, Myland and out along the Stanway side are trussed rafter roofs almost without exception, usually a fink truss at six hundred centres with a clear span across the whole house.
That gives a clear width between webs of roughly five hundred and fifty millimetres, which sets the largest single unit that can go in without engineering. A wider opening means a designed solution with proprietary hangers and a structural calculation, which is entirely possible and changes both the programme and the price. Where the roof space is an attic truss, built with the room already formed inside it, the picture is different again and rather better: the vertical webs sit at the room’s walls and the slope above is clear.
Converted barracks, and who consents to work on that roof
The redevelopment of the old garrison land south of the town produced a large residential quarter, and alongside the new housing a number of Victorian military buildings were converted into flats and houses. Long ranges, steep slate slopes, deep plans and a good deal of protected fabric.
Two permissions run in parallel on those buildings. Where the building is listed, consent applies to the roof structure as much as the elevation. Where the property is a flat within a converted range, the roof stays with the freeholder under the lease and their written consent comes before any application. Neither is a closed door, and both take longer to arrange than the installation itself takes to carry out, so they are started at the first conversation.
Flat roofs on the Hythe side, and proving the fall first
Along the Colne at the Hythe and through Old Heath, the ground is low and flat and the building stock includes a good deal that was never residential. Warehouses, maltings and yard buildings converted into homes, with large flat or very shallow decks over deep plans that daylight struggles to reach.
Those are excellent candidates for glass in the roof and unforgiving of a careless kerb detail. A flat roof is laid to a fall, conventionally a minimum of 1:80 as designed to allow for deflection and construction tolerance, and on a wide deck that has been re-covered once or twice the designed fall and the actual fall are frequently different numbers. Where a survey finds water standing more than about forty eight hours after rain, sorting the drainage first and setting the unit into a roof that sheds properly is the cheaper sequence, even though on the day it does not feel like it.
At the far end of the coverage, and how a Colchester day is planned
Colchester sits towards the outer edge of the thirty miles by road that Sunspire covers, and that is worth being straightforward about, because it changes how a job is run rather than whether it is taken on.
It means an early start and a longer working day rather than two short ones. It means materials, the correct flashing kit and the likely awkward extras travel up with the van at the outset, because a forgotten trim is a two hour round trip rather than a twenty minute one. It means the survey is thorough enough that the install is a known quantity before anyone sets off. And the standing rule holds regardless of the distance back: the roof is closed and watertight at the end of every working day, whatever the forecast has decided to do.
Notification, and how a Colchester enquiry runs
Fitting a new rooflight or putting a modern unit into an existing opening is notifiable work in England. Part L governs the thermal performance, Part K applies where there is a risk of falling, and Part B where the unit serves as a means of escape. Sunspire files that notification as part of the job, through Colchester City Council or an approved inspector as appropriate, and an unnotified alteration is the kind of thing that surfaces years later when a solicitor asks for a completion certificate that does not exist.
The enquiry itself runs in two stages. A range by email once the basics are known, then a fixed written figure after the survey, naming the unit by manufacturer, model, external size, glazing specification and frame finish, with the workmanship carrying a ten year guarantee. A photograph of the roof from outside, one of the ceiling from inside and a rough room size are usually enough for the first figure. If the building is listed or sits inside a conservation area, say so at that point, because it changes the product before it changes the number. Typical costs for the common job types are on the costs page, and the background reading lives in the guides.
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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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