Kimberley, out on the A610: 6.1 miles by road to the north-west
Skylights & rooflights in Kimberley
A market town strung along the A610 that grew on coal, beer and stockings. Whatever sort of house you have, there is probably a back room or a landing that waits all winter for better light.
A town that malted, mined and knitted
Kimberley's story is three trades running side by side: coal mining, brewing and hosiery. Whatever the age of your own house, each roof is read on its own, from the loft hatch, before a rooflight is drawn onto it.
Kimberley, read from the roof down
Kimberley, a market town and civil parish in Broxtowe, is home to a recorded 4,467 people. It lies six miles out along the A610, near enough to Nottingham for the daily commute and far enough to feel like a place in its own right. The five chapters below set out what we weigh up before suggesting a skylight here: who decides, what industry left behind, how a survey visit reaches you, the open ground around the town, and which products suit. If you are new to us, begin with skylight installation in Nottingham.
01
Whose desk your application lands on
Kimberley sits inside the Borough of Broxtowe, so the planning authority for your house is Broxtowe Borough Council. Nottingham City Council has no say here, even though the city is a short drive off. Any planning query, or any Building Control notification, goes to Broxtowe, and that is where we begin.
Protected ground in and around the town
Kimberley has a conservation area that carries the town's name. It was designated in 1989 and covers the town centre point itself. The records place one listed building inside it, at Grade II. A second conservation area, Nuthall, lies just over a kilometre off. It belongs to the next settlement, so it matters only if your house is on that side of the line. Its listed buildings number twelve, split between two Grade II* and ten Grade II.
Historic England lists ten buildings in the 1.5 km circle round Kimberley's centre, every one of them Grade II. When a house is old or close to the middle of town, we ask Broxtowe to confirm its listing and any Article 4 direction before anything is bought, so the answer fits your address.
1989designated
Kimberley conservation area, over the town centre point
10Grade II
listed buildings inside the 1.5 km circle
Who files what in Kimberley
Whether a rooflight needs an application at all depends on rules that apply nationally. We keep them in one place, the planning permission guide, so they never drift between pages. What we bring to a Kimberley house is the local reading: which slope faces the road, whether the house is listed or inside the conservation area, and who files what.
If the job counts as notifiable work, the Building Control paperwork is ours to file, through Broxtowe's own team or a registered approver, whichever you choose. Installation is to the Building Regulations in force.
02
Three trades, and what they leave a roof to cope with
Ask about Kimberley's past and the same three industries come up: coal mining, brewing and hosiery manufacturing. The town grew as a centre for all of them. That is a useful clue and nothing more. Your own roof is what counts, whatever its neighbours, so the answer comes from the loft: rafter spacing, the covering, and what hangs beneath it.
In any town, an extension added by one owner may rest on a roof framed by somebody else decades before. We handle that by looking.
A terrace or an older cottage
If your house is one of the narrow older kind, the back slope will usually take a roof window and the front slope is better left alone. Timbers in an older roof are not always evenly spaced, so on the survey we measure the gaps before naming a size. A window picked to fit between two timbers keeps the cutting simple and the opening tidy.
- Wall plate
- The timber laid along the top of the wall that the lower ends of the roof timbers rest on.
- Truss
- A ready-made timber triangle spanning the width of the house, carrying the roof as one frame.
- Trimmer
- A short cross-timber fixed between two roof timbers to edge a new opening.
A later semi or detached house
Newer roofs are frequently framed with factory-made triangles of timber, laid across the whole house, rather than cut one rafter at a time. Those cannot simply be sawn through. Any change has to be planned first, and some openings need an engineer's sign-off. We look at the frame before we price, never after.
Swingate and the edge of town
Swingate is a suburb the map places a little under a kilometre from the centre. We cover it and every other Kimberley street on exactly the same terms as the middle of town.
03
The A610, four closed stations and the van
Kimberley is 6.1 miles out from the middle of Nottingham by road, to the north-west, and around 15 minutes' drive with the traffic behaving. Two numbered roads, the A610 and the B600, run close to the middle of town. The A610 is the one the town is strung along.
Trains are another matter. Four former stations lie within roughly two kilometres: Kimberley East, Kimberley West, Watnall and Awsworth. Every one is marked closed. So nothing arrives by rail, and our van does the work.
The visit itself
The survey costs nothing and it is where the decision really gets made. We start in the dark room, standing where you stand when you notice the gloom, and we note where the light fades. Then we go up and read the roof: slope, covering, framing, and the way rain leaves it. Only after that is a price written down.
That written quote is fixed. The figure on the paper is the figure on the day, with nothing to haggle over once the ladders are up.
6.1miles
along the road to Nottingham centre
15minutes
drive, traffic allowing
4stations
marked closed within about 2 km
Getting the van close
When we book, we ask where a vehicle can pull in and whether a side route leads round to the back, so nobody carries long loads through your hall. On a narrow street that ten-minute chat saves the whole visit.
The full list of places we cover shows the towns and villages around Kimberley, each of them inside our 30-mile road radius.
From the landing, looking up
Before we measure anything outside, we stand on the landing or in the back bedroom and look up at the place where the light fails. The spot where a pale ceiling meets a dark corner tells us more about where the opening belongs than a plan does. It is often why a first idea gets moved along the rafters, so the daylight lands on the stairs or the bed instead of the wall.
04
Parks, spinneys and a very open sky
What all that green means from October to March.
Kimberley has plenty of open ground. Hall Om Wong Open Space is 0.4 km from the centre and Watnall Green 0.8 km. Within three kilometres the map names six nature reserves: Kimberley Meadow, Watnall Spinney, Smithurst Road, Seller's Wood, Chilwell Dam Plantation and Oldmoor Wood. Kimberley Meadow is nearest, at 0.5 km.
That is good news for the view out of a loft bedroom. It also puts two demands on a roof.
Autumn fall on a flat roof
Where there are trees there is leaf-litter, and an extension roof collects it. The leaves bank against the kerb that raises a rooflight above the roof finish and hold water against it for weeks. We build that kerb tall, so pooled water never reaches the glass, and lay the finish to fall away. On a pitched slope we choose the flashing to match the tile or slate, which lets debris slide past.
A wide sky and cold glass
A house with a broad outlook faces a big, cold sky, and a rooflight faces it head on. Glazing that holds its heat, with a warm-edge spacer round the unit, stops the inside pane running cold. That matters when steam from the kettle and the shower is looking for a cold surface to settle on. A rooflight that opens, or has a trickle vent, lets the steam out first.
If you can see trees from the bedroom, fit the roof window low enough to look through from a chair. A pale reveal on the inside of the opening sends what daylight there is further into the room.
05
Three fixes for three kinds of dark room
We work from the dark room outwards. For a house in a town like this, three products do most of the useful work, and each answers a different problem.
A bedroom or loft room under the slope
A roof window gives you sky to look at and an opening for air. It is the natural fit when the room already sits under a pitched slope. If you have an old VELUX in place, the code on its data plate gives the width and height, so a replacement can often be matched to the opening that is already cut.
A kitchen or extension with a flat roof
When a single-storey extension runs deep into the garden, daylight gives out halfway along. A roof lantern lifts the ceiling and takes light from several faces at once, which keeps the room bright under heavy cloud. A big flat rooflight does a similar job with a plainer outline.
Landings and inner bathrooms
A sun tunnel is a mirror-lined tube. Its dome catches daylight on the roof and a diffuser spreads it from the ceiling below. Small on the roof, big on a dull afternoon.
New opening or like-for-like swap
We fit new rooflights and we replace tired ones. If an old unit has gone cloudy between its panes, or its frame is spent, the survey shows whether a new unit set into the same opening is the tidier route. Both routes carry our workmanship guarantee: ten years, in writing.
Asked on the doorstep in Kimberley
Is Kimberley's conservation area likely to affect my rooflight?
Rarely. Even inside it, a house rooflight keeps its permitted development rights; only a listed house or an Article 4 direction takes them away. The area is centred on the middle of town and holds one listed building. If you live near the centre, we check both points with Broxtowe Borough Council before ordering.
Who sorts out Building Control for a rooflight here?
We do, whenever the job is notifiable. The notification goes to Broxtowe or to a registered approver, whichever you choose, so you chase nobody. The rooflight is fitted to the current regulations and you receive the paperwork when we finish.
Our landing is dark all year. Can a skylight reach it?
Usually. A landing right beneath the roof can be lit by a roof window or a flat rooflight. With a loft overhead, a sun tunnel tube can cross it and finish as a diffuser in the ceiling. We look at both during the survey and quote the one that suits.
Do you work in Swingate and the villages around?
Yes. Swingate is part of Kimberley and we work there as readily as in the centre. The survey costs nothing anywhere inside our 30-mile road radius, and we come to your door because there is no showroom.