Roof Lantern Installation
Flat-roof glazing sized to the room and detailed into the kerb below it.
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South Essex
Rooflight installation in Shenfield
Edwardian and interwar villas. What that means for getting glass into a roof here is the whole of this page.
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In Shenfield
What we install on Shenfield 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
17 things worth knowing about Shenfield roofs
Shenfield is a railway suburb that took its architecture seriously. The station made the place, and the villas that went up along Hutton Road, Chelmsford Road and the avenues between them from the eighteen nineties to the nineteen thirties were built for people who could afford a bit of roof. Gables, deep eaves, tall stacks, slate and clay, and generous timber underneath.
That generosity is good news for anyone wanting daylight through the roof, and it comes with its own set of constraints. Sunspire fits new rooflights and replaces units that have reached the end of their life across Shenfield. This page is about what an Edwardian villa roof will and will not give you.
- 01 Villas built for the railway, and the roofs that came with them
- 02 Edwardian roof carpentry, purlins, struts and where they land
- 03 The purlin, and the sill height it forces
- 04 Front gables, hung tile and what the street sees
- 05 Slate on a steep Shenfield pitch, and how it is lifted
- 06 Bay roofs, porch roofs and the small planes nobody counts
- 07 The rear addition, and the room that ended up darkest
- 08 Shenfield Common, its oaks and the conservation boundary
- 09 Tall stacks on an Edwardian roof, and where a unit can sit
- 10 Loft conversions since the trains changed
- 11 A third bedroom in the roof, and the escape route from it
- 12 Old ceilings, and what happens when a roof is opened above them
- 13 Interwar infill between the villas
- 14 Which way a Shenfield rear faces
- 15 Scaffold across a deep front garden
- 16 Regulations and consent on a Shenfield villa
- 17 Getting a Shenfield roof looked at
Villas built for the railway, and the roofs that came with them
The typical Shenfield villa is a substantial detached or semi-detached house with a complicated roof: a main range running parallel to the street, a projecting front gable, a rear wing, and often a subsidiary roof over a bay or a porch.
Compared with anything postwar, the timber is heavy and the pitch is steep, frequently forty degrees or more. Both work in your favour. A steep pitch means any roof window on the market will weather correctly, and heavy timber means an opening can be trimmed properly rather than engineered around. The complication is geometry, not structure.
Edwardian roof carpentry, purlins, struts and where they land
An Edwardian roof is a cut roof built around purlins. The rafters are relatively light and they are supported partway up their length by a purlin running horizontally, which is itself held by struts dropping onto an internal load bearing wall or onto a binder.
That system decides where an opening can go. A roof window sits between the purlin and the ridge, or between the purlin and the eaves, but taking one out across the purlin line means the purlin is interrupted and its load has to be picked up elsewhere. It is entirely doable and it is a structural exercise rather than a carpentry one. Knowing where the purlin sits, before choosing a size, is what keeps the job simple.
Find the purlin in the loft with a torch before deciding how tall the window should be.
The purlin, and the sill height it forces
Because the purlin is usually somewhere near the middle of the rafter run, the window that fits neatly above it can end up with its sill higher than people expect.
This is the practical consequence worth understanding. A window whose head sits around two metres above finished floor lets somebody standing beside it see out. A window sitting entirely in the upper part of the slope brightens the ceiling and gives no view at all. Where a view matters and the purlin is in the way, the honest options are to strengthen and interrupt the purlin, or to accept two windows in the bays above and below rather than one tall one.
Front gables, hung tile and what the street sees
The Shenfield villa frontage is a designed thing: a gable with decorative barge boards, sometimes hung tile or applied timbering, and a roof plane that is very much part of the composition.
Planning officers and neighbours both notice a front slope, and a modern white surround in the middle of one is the sort of alteration that gets remembered. Where a front plane genuinely has to carry the glass, a slim cast conservation unit set flush in the plane of the tiles reads as though it belongs. Where the rear will do the same job, the rear is the sensible answer, and on most of these houses the rear plane is larger anyway.
Slate on a steep Shenfield pitch, and how it is lifted
A good number of the earlier villas carry Welsh slate. It is thin, flat and takes a low profile flashing kit dressed tight, which makes for a neat result.
Working with it takes care. Slate is brittle at the nail hole, breaks under a boot, and a hundred year old roof will have nails that have corroded to the point where lifting one slate loosens three. Slates are lifted with a ripper rather than levered, sound ones are set aside for reuse around the opening, and a proportion is expected to be lost. That expectation belongs in the quote rather than appearing as an extra on the second day.
Bay roofs, porch roofs and the small planes nobody counts
The Shenfield villa carries several minor roofs: a lean-to over a canted bay, a small pitch over the front porch, a flat lead or felt deck above a rear bay.
Those planes are too small for a rooflight in almost every case, and they matter because they are where water is delivered onto the main roof and where abutment flashings already exist. A new opening in the main slope is positioned clear of the point where a bay roof discharges, so the side flashing is never asked to handle water arriving from another plane. On a busy elevation that constraint narrows the options quickly.
The rear addition, and the room that ended up darkest
Almost every villa of this period has a two storey rear wing with a single storey addition beyond it, and the room in that addition is invariably the darkest in the house, hemmed in by the wing on one side and the boundary on the other.
Roof glazing is the only real answer, because the walls that could carry a window are either party boundary or shaded. A flush flat rooflight in the addition roof faces the whole dome of the sky and delivers something in the order of two to three times the illuminance of a vertical window of the same area. In a side return kitchen the difference is not incremental.
Shenfield Common, its oaks and the conservation boundary
The Common and the houses facing it sit within a conservation area, and the mature oaks across it are protected as a matter of course.
Two effects follow. Inside the boundary, permitted development rights for roof alterations are commonly restricted, so what would be a simple job three streets away becomes an application. And the canopy takes real daylight off the plots nearest the Common, which changes the specification: a shaded plane wants a larger opening with neutral glass rather than a small one with heavy solar control. The glazing specification follows the light that actually arrives.
Tall stacks on an Edwardian roof, and where a unit can sit
These houses were built with multiple fireplaces and the stacks are correspondingly large, often rising through the middle of a slope rather than at a gable end.
A rooflight needs clear distance from a stack for two reasons. The side flashing of the unit and the apron of the stack both want their own uninterrupted run of covering, and squeezing them together produces a detail that relies on sealant rather than on lapped metal. The other reason is water: a stack sheds onto the slope below it, and a unit sitting in that path is working harder than it needs to. Half a metre of clear covering either side is a sensible working minimum.
Loft conversions since the trains changed
Shenfield became the eastern terminus of the Elizabeth line, and the effect on the local housing market has been to make staying and extending more attractive than moving. Loft conversions on these villas have followed.
The stock suits it. Steep pitches, deep roof volumes and internal walls in useful places mean a proper room rather than a crawl space. Rooflight decisions belong at design stage, because the position of the glazing interacts with the position of the stairs, the dormer and the purlin, and a unit added at second fix will be placed where it fits rather than where it works.
A third bedroom in the roof, and the escape route from it
Once a Shenfield loft becomes a bedroom, one unit in that room normally has to serve as a means of escape under Part B.
That sets a minimum clear opening area, a minimum dimension in both height and width, and a sill within a defined band above the finished floor so somebody can reach it. A centre pivot window does not give the same clear opening as a top hung one of identical external size, because the sash sits across the middle of the aperture when open. On a steep Edwardian pitch the sill height requirement is usually easy to meet, which is one more advantage of the geometry.
Old ceilings, and what happens when a roof is opened above them
Below an Edwardian roof there is frequently lath and plaster rather than plasterboard, and a hundred years of it is held on by nibs of plaster pushed through the laths.
Vibration travels. Cutting an opening in the roof above a lath and plaster ceiling can loosen it several metres away, so the work is planned to limit hammering and the ceiling condition is recorded at survey rather than discussed afterwards. Where a ceiling is already sagging or drummy, forming the reveal in plasterboard and skimming into the old work usually gives a better result than trying to blend new lath and plaster into old.
Interwar infill between the villas
The gaps between the Edwardian avenues filled in during the twenties and thirties with semis and smaller detached houses, hipped, tiled and pitched at around forty degrees.
These are the most straightforward roofs in Shenfield. Rafters at four hundred or six hundred centres, purlins in sensible positions, sand faced concrete or plain clay tile, and enough pitch that any flashing kit performs as designed. A pair of roof windows in a rear slope of that kind is about as simple as this trade gets, and the same stock runs on into Hutton next door.
Which way a Shenfield rear faces
The avenues run off the main roads at consistent angles, so within one street the rear elevations tend to agree with each other. Orientation moves the glass specification more than the size does.
| Rear plane faces | What the room receives | Glazing call |
|---|---|---|
| North, towards the Common | Even cool light, often tree filtered | Neutral glass, generous area |
| East | Bright early, settled afternoon | Neutral to light solar control |
| South, over long gardens | Strong gain from late spring | Solar control, blind ordered in |
| West | Low hot sun late in the day | Solar control and external shading |
Scaffold across a deep front garden
Shenfield plots are generous and most have side access, which usually makes the rear elevation reachable without carrying anything through the house.
The complications are specific rather than general: a narrow side passage between a house and its boundary where a bay projects, a garage built hard against the flank wall, or a mature protected tree standing exactly where a tower would go. All three are found at survey and priced then. Where the front elevation has to be scaffolded, the deep front gardens here mean the pavement is rarely involved, which keeps the job simpler than the same work in a town centre street.
Regulations and consent on a Shenfield villa
Fitting a new rooflight or replacing an existing one is notifiable under Building Regulations in England, engaging Part L for thermal performance, Part K where there is a risk of falling and Part B where a unit serves as escape. Shenfield falls under Brentwood borough.
Sunspire handles that notification as part of the job, which matters because an unnotified alteration surfaces years later in a sale when a solicitor asks for a completion certificate. Planning is separate: most Shenfield rooflights fall within permitted development provided the unit projects no more than 150mm beyond the existing roof plane, with the conservation area around the Common as the main exception.
Getting a Shenfield roof looked at
A range by email needs three things: a photograph of the roof from the garden, one of the ceiling from inside, and the rough size of the room. On these houses a note of where the purlin sits helps a great deal.
The survey then settles the plane, the purlin, the covering condition and the access, and turns the range into a fixed written figure. Shenfield sits alongside Brentwood and the rest of the county on the areas we cover page, and the costs guide explains what moves a figure between the two.
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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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- New installations and replacements