Up the road to the north-west of the city centre, 17 miles
Skylights & rooflights in Somercotes
A former mining village on the Derbyshire side of the border, once surrounded by more than five pits, and later home to clothing factories. Plenty of its rooms could use more sky.
Cloth was made here, by English Rose and Aertex
Clothing was once a big local employer, with English Rose and Aertex both running factories in the area. Aertex is cellular fabric, built around trapped air. Nothing is more useful to a dark house than a small opening that lets in a lot of light and keeps the cold out of the room beneath it.
Somercotes, pit village and parish
Somercotes is a Derbyshire village and parish close to the Nottinghamshire border, with a population on record of 15,105. It is a large village with no railway station within 2 km, and every house is surveyed on its own terms. Here is how we think about a rooflight in a place like this, beginning with the road. For how a job runs from first visit to finish, start at skylight installation in Nottingham.
01
Seventeen miles out, just inside Derbyshire
Somercotes sits close to the Nottinghamshire line but belongs to Derbyshire, which affects who you speak to about planning. By road it is 17 miles from the city centre, to the north-west, and about 26 minutes in a van with ordinary traffic. That puts it well inside the 30 miles we cover, though it is one of the longer trips we make from the city.
The B600, B6016 and B6017 all pass within easy reach of the village centre. We arrive by road and plan each visit around those routes.
A longer drive means a tidier visit
We do not like arriving without the right gear, so the survey is a one-trip job wherever possible. Before we come, we ask for a few photographs of the room and the roof, and which direction the room faces if you know it. We bring the measuring kit and ladders and spend our time on the things that decide the quote: the room, then the roof.
The survey costs you nothing. The written quote comes afterwards, with a price that stays the same until the work is finished.
17miles
road distance, north-west of Nottingham
26minutes
usual drive time by van to Somercotes
What the tape measure finds
A room that never gets bright often has a simple cause: the only window faces a neighbour's wall, or the extension swallowed the old one. We note where you sit, where the daylight gives out and what is outside, because that decides where the opening should go before we think about glass.
Roof timbers rarely sit where the drawings say. We measure the gaps between them and note any bracing, because an opening that lands between two rafters is cleaner and easier to seal than one that cuts through.
From the loft we can also see where daylight leaks through the covering, where a chimney breast or a water tank takes up the space under the slope, and how much headroom the planned position leaves. A back bedroom that faces north, for example, often gains more from a roof window than from anything done to the wall. We write what we saw into the notes you keep, so the quote reflects the actual loft.
02
Which council, and the conservation area next door
9listed
in the Riddings conservation area, all Grade II
10listed
all Grade II, around the village centre
For planning, Somercotes answers to Amber Valley Borough Council. The council in Nottingham has no say here, even though the village is nearer the city than most of Derbyshire.
The nearest conservation area is Riddings, designated on 4 February 1980 and lying 0.84 km from the village centre. It contains nine listed buildings, all Grade II. It belongs to neighbouring Riddings rather than Somercotes, and its boundary is one we confirm for any house close to it. Across a wider circle of 1.5 km, Historic England has ten listed buildings, all Grade II.
What we do with that
The check is made on your address, not from a map. Before a rooflight is ordered, our question to the council concerns your address: is the building listed, and does your street sit inside Riddings or any other designated area. Listed building consent is needed for a new roof opening in a listed house. Inside a conservation area, a house rooflight remains permitted development unless an Article 4 direction has removed it. Either way, you know where you stand before anything is ordered.
The national side
England-wide rules cover every rooflight, planning conditions and Building Regulations alike. They live on the planning permission for rooflights page, so we leave them there.
What we handle is the notification to Building Control, a requirement for most new roof openings. It goes to the right body, and you receive the outcome with your paperwork when the job is done.
03
More than five pits, and the ground they left
A village that grew from coal.
Mining shaped Somercotes. The village was once surrounded by more than five pits, and its fortunes rose with the coal trade as it expanded rapidly through the nineteenth century. People moved here for the work, and the village grew to match.
The roofs in a village that grew this way went up at different times, by different hands. Some may be old and hand-cut, others newer and built from factory trusses. We learn which you have by climbing into the loft with a torch and a tape.
Two roofs, two approaches
On a hand-cut roof, an opening can be framed with trimmers between the existing rafters. On a roof built from trusses, the structure cannot be cut without redesigning the load path, so the opening has to fit within the gaps or call for an engineer's advice. We check the roof before we price it, not after, and the quote reflects what we found.
- Truss
- A factory-made triangle of timbers that carries the roof as a unit and cannot be cut like loose rafters.
- Trimmer
- A cross timber that frames an opening in a roof where the rafters have been interrupted.
- Load path
- The route weight takes from the roof down through the structure to the walls.
Light for rooms that have never had much
In a house that was built close to others, the stairs and the landing have no outside wall. A sun tunnel serves that spot well, as it needs only a small circle cut in the roof. Where a loft is boarded and used, a roof window is the larger gain: it brings sky, a view, and something to open for fresh air.
04
Fields, ponds and a damp winter roof
Although Somercotes is increasingly built up, there is still agricultural land in the northern and western parts of the parish. A small nature reserve at Pennytown Ponds adds to the open feel, and Riddings Park is 1 km from the centre. Where houses back onto fields, a roof has less shelter from the wind and a lot more rain driven against it.
Trees, moss and the flashing
Open ground means moss and wind-blown leaves. On a pitched roof the flashing around a roof window should be tight and fully overlapped, so that water running down the slope is steered round the frame. On a flat roof the rooflight stands on a raised kerb, and we keep it high enough that rain pooling there can drain before it reaches the seal.
Moisture indoors
Cold weather brings condensation, and a dark room shut up for months is where it shows. Glazing with a warm-edge spacer stays closer to room temperature, so it mists less. A rooflight that opens adds a second route out for steam from the kitchen or bathroom, and it dries a room faster than a window ever will because warm air rises to it.
Old units
Rooflights fitted years ago were often chosen for price alone, and some have aged badly. The signs are a cloudy pane, a draught round the frame or a stain on the ceiling below. After a wet spell, look for tide marks on the plaster beside the opening, as they show a slow leak early.
Frames that have swelled, seals that have given way, panes fogged between the layers: all of these are replaceable. We will tell you on the survey if the opening can keep its place and take a fresh unit, or whether the upstand needs rebuilding too.
05
What we would suggest in a village like this
The right product depends on the room, so we start there. These are the three situations we would expect most often.
A kitchen or living room built outwards
When a family needs more space, the extension usually goes out the back. The new room is deep and low, and the middle gets the least light. A roof lantern admits light from every side of a raised glass roof, which is why it stays bright when the sky is plain white. For shallower roofs or smaller budgets, a flat roof rooflight is more compact.
A loft bedroom or study
The roof window is the first choice for a sloping ceiling. A good one can be opened for fresh air and fitted with a blind. Place it low enough to see out when you sit down, and the loft stops feeling like a store room.
Windowless stairs and bathrooms
A sun tunnel brings daylight to a landing without cutting any wall. It also lights an inside bathroom, where there is no other option.
Whatever is installed, the work comes with a ten-year guarantee in writing, and the fixing follows the Building Regulations as they stand. Our areas we cover page shows which neighbouring places we also visit from Nottingham.
Asked in Somercotes before the van arrives
Does Riddings conservation area cover my street in Somercotes?
Riddings conservation area is recorded just under a kilometre from the village centre, and all nine listed buildings in it are Grade II. Whether your own street falls inside it depends on the address. Amber Valley Borough Council can confirm the boundary, and we ask them for you at the survey stage, ahead of ordering anything.
Is it worth you travelling 17 miles for one small rooflight?
Yes. A single sun tunnel or roof window is as welcome to us as a large lantern, and Somercotes sits comfortably within our 30-mile road radius. The survey is free regardless of the size of job, and the price is fixed in writing after we have seen the roof, so nothing about the distance changes your quote.
I do not know what my roof is made of. Does that matter?
Not before the visit. Many owners cannot say whether the roof is trussed or built from rafters, and it is the first thing we check. We look in the loft, measure the timbers and tell you what the structure allows before we write the quote. If it needs more work, the price will say so.
Can you swap a rooflight with fogged glass for a new one?
We can. Fog trapped inside the glazing unit means its seal has let go, and wiping will not shift it. On the survey we decide whether the frame can stay with new glazing or the whole unit should be replaced. You receive a written guarantee of ten years on the work, whichever route is taken.