Ten road miles from Nottingham city centre, heading east
Skylights & rooflights in Bingham
A market town in Rushcliffe, with a protected centre around its Market Place and estates built out from it over the last two centuries. Different roofs, different problems, and plenty of rooms that want more sky.
The market still turns up every week
An open-air food market fills the Market Place every Thursday, and a farmers' market joins it on the third Saturday of the month. The Bingham Conservation Area covers that centre, so around the stalls we check for an Article 4 direction and listing first.
Bingham, from the Market Place up to the ridge
Bingham is a town of 10,109 people in the borough of Rushcliffe. It has a protected historic core and two long waves of house building behind it, so one street can hold roofs from very different decades. Below, five chapters on how we read a Bingham roof, which council answers for it, and what tends to work. The service itself is set out on our page about skylight installation in Nottingham.
01
Ten miles out: how we reach a Bingham survey
By road, Bingham is 10 miles from the middle of Nottingham, straight out to the east, and the drive takes around 19 minutes. The A52 is the only classified road recorded within about a kilometre of the centre, and the bypass that carries it past the southern edge of Bingham opened in December 1986. Bingham also sits near the meeting of two older routes: the A46, which follows the line of the Roman Fosse Way between Leicester and Newark-on-Trent, and the A52 between Nottingham and Grantham.
The town has its own railway station, just 0.3 km from the centre and open. We still come by van, because a survey needs ladders, a tape and a torch, but the station tells you something useful: Bingham is easy to reach.
What the distance means for you
Ten miles is well inside the 30-mile road radius we work to, so a Bingham address gets the same free survey as one in the city itself. The survey is free at any distance, and a price only follows once we have seen the roof. We visit, look at the room, climb into the roof if there is a hatch, and only then write the fixed quote.
10miles
by road into Bingham
19minutes
van drive, traffic allowing
0.3km
from the centre to the railway station
Arranging the visit
Before we turn up, we need to know where the van can park near your front door and whether a path runs round to the back. Some streets have room for a van at the door and some do not. Tell us which you have and the visit runs without fuss.
For the full list of places within our reach, see the areas we cover.
02
Two waves of building and what is under each roof
Bingham has grown in bursts. The first big wave came with the Industrial Revolution, when the workforce expanded and the town needed more homes for a rising population. The second arrived in the 1960s and 1970s, when new houses went up almost without pause to take in the people moving here. In 1951 the population was 1,692. It is now 10,109, and the difference is mostly bricks.
Which of the two eras is your roof? That decides how we frame an opening, so here is what each usually means for a rooflight, and then we check yours.
The older stock
Homes from the first wave tend to be built to older methods, with timber that was cut and fitted by hand. Gaps between rafters can vary, and the roof may have been patched over the decades. Before we name a rooflight size we measure the actual spacing, because a window that fits between two timbers needs less structural work than one that must interrupt them.
The post-war stock
Roofs from the 1960s and 1970s are more often built from factory trusses. A truss is a triangulated frame, and cutting through its members changes how the roof carries load. That does not rule out a rooflight; it means the opening has to be framed with proper trimmers and the work checked against the regulations. We look in the loft hatch, see which type you have, and say so plainly.
- Truss
- A factory-made triangular timber frame that carries the roof; its members cannot simply be cut.
- Trimmer
- A short timber fixed across the gap to frame the edges of a new opening in the roof.
- Rafter
- One of the angled timbers under the tiles, running down from the ridge.
Light at the back of the house
In either era the dim rooms are usually the same: a hallway, an upstairs landing, an inner bathroom with no outside wall. An opening in the roof above one of those can change the whole feel of a house through the short months of the year.
03
The Bingham conservation area and who to ask
The local authority for planning and building matters here is Rushcliffe Borough Council, the same council as West Bridgford, even though Bingham is a separate town some miles off.
A designated centre
The Bingham Conservation Area covers the middle of the town and was designated on 5 November 2002. That boundary holds 24 listed buildings: a single Grade I and 23 at Grade II. Widen the search to a 1.5 km radius around the middle and the count is 26: one Grade I and 25 Grade II.
What does that mean for a rooflight? Most work on an ordinary house is allowed without a planning application, but an Article 4 direction can change the picture, and a listed house needs the council's consent before anyone opens up its roof. If your house is near the Market Place, we check with Rushcliffe whether an Article 4 direction applies before an order is placed. It costs nothing to check and saves a good deal of trouble.
24listed
buildings inside the conservation area (1 Grade I, 23 Grade II)
2002designated
Bingham Conservation Area, 5 November
Out in the newer estates
Romans Quarter lies 1.3 km from the centre, away from the historic core. Distance from the Market Place does not settle the question on its own. The check is the same: council, then listing, then a look at the roof.
Rules that reach Bingham from Westminster
The rules that apply across England, including what permitted development allows and the Building Regulations for cutting a hole in a roof, sit in our planning guide for rooflights. If Building Control needs telling, that falls to us, and the paperwork reaches you at handover.
04
Parks, villages and the open country around the town
What a rural edge means for roof weather.
Bingham has green space close by, and that shapes the roof. Cogley Lane Park is 0.7 km from the centre and Bingham Linear Park is 1.3 km away. Beyond them lie the neighbouring communities: Radcliffe-on-Trent, East Bridgford, Car Colston, Scarrington, Aslockton, Whatton-in-the-Vale, Tithby and Cropwell Butler.
Open country affects a roof in plain ways. There is less shelter from neighbouring buildings, so rain and wind reach the roof with more force. A well-fitted rooflight copes with that, but only if the details are right.
Flashings and fixings
On a pitched roof the window is sealed with a flashing kit that must match the tile or slate. We fit the kit that suits your covering rather than a generic one, because a mismatch is where water finds its way in once the rain turns heavy.
Cold glass and damp air
In a house at the edge of town, the coldest surface in the room is usually the glass. Steam from a shower or kettle settles on it first, and a badly specified pane drips. We pick glazing that keeps the inner surface warmer, and where a bathroom is involved we suggest a model that opens, so the steam has a way out.
Low sun and the clear view
Where does the sky open up? A roof with open sky all round it helps daylight. A rooflight on a roof with nothing tall beside it receives light from more of the sky. That is useful from October to March, when the sun barely clears the rooftops and a side window gets little.
05
Which rooflight tends to suit which Bingham room
The product comes second to the room. Here are the pairings that suit housing like Bingham's.
A pitched roof and a landing
Where the landing sits right under a sloping roof, a roof window is the plain answer. It brings in sky, it opens for air, and it can be fitted without altering the structure beyond a single opening. If you are replacing an old VELUX, the size code on its data plate tells us what will fit the opening already there.
A flat-roofed extension
A single-storey rear extension with a flat roof suits a flat roof rooflight, either a rectangular unit or a larger one over the deepest part of the room. A roof lantern does the same job with height, pulling light in from several directions and giving the ceiling shape.
A room beside a conservation street
If your house sits inside the protected centre, a flush-fitting conservation rooflight may be the sensible choice, since it sits low in the slope and respects the look of the street. Our page on conservation rooflights explains how they are made and fitted.
Replacing what you have
Already own a rooflight that has failed? Fitting its successor into the same hole can be simpler than cutting a new one. The survey is free; we tell you what we see, give you a fixed written price, and back the work with a written guarantee on the workmanship that runs for ten years.
What Bingham homeowners ask before a survey
My house is near the Market Place. Do I need to worry about the conservation area?
It is worth a check. The Bingham Conservation Area covers the middle of the town, and the one thing that would change the rules for an ordinary house is an Article 4 direction. We contact Rushcliffe Borough Council before anything is ordered, and we also find out whether your house is listed. If it is not affected, we carry on to the fixed written quote.
Our house was built in the 1970s. Can a rooflight go into a truss roof?
Often yes, but the opening has to be framed properly, because cutting a truss member weakens the frame unless the load is carried round it. We look in the loft at the survey and tell you whether your roof is trussed. Where it is, the work is planned with trimmers and checked against the Building Regulations.
Is Bingham too far out for you to come to?
No. Bingham sits 10 road miles out, comfortably within our 30-mile radius. The survey is free, and you are quoted a fixed price in writing after we have seen the roof. There is no showroom, because we visit you at home.
Who handles Building Control for a rooflight in Bingham?
We do. If the work is notifiable, the notice is lodged by our office. It can go to Rushcliffe's building control team, or to a registered building control approver, the private route. You get the paperwork afterwards, and the guarantee on the workmanship is ten years, written down.