Skylights & rooflights in Bolsover

Below the ridge, terraced rows in brick were built for families working at the collieries, and Carr Vale, below the castle, grew up in the late nineteenth century to house them. Their roofs are usually slate or concrete tile over small lofts, with a shallow rear kitchen roof below. A flat rooflight on the kitchen roof is a quieter route than a lantern when a bedroom window sits just above.

Later estates of semis and bungalows spread across the slopes, with concrete tile on simple pitched roofs. Plenty of bungalows can fit a roof window to a room in the roof, and the semis that have been extended at the back take lanterns and flat rooflights well. Newer streets on the edges carry trussed roofs, which limit how wide an opening can be without structural design.

The castle on the ridge gives Bolsover its character, and the streets near it keep older proportions, narrow plots and steep roofs. A roof window in this part of town sits against a skyline that people notice. For that reason we look at the slope from several points on the street at survey, not just from the garden.

Down at Carr Vale, the ground is flatter and lower, and the houses are more sheltered from the wind. A flat rooflight or a sun tunnel does well here, because the rooms are often deep and there is less wall to take a window.

Where the town meets open land at its edges, the newer houses stand with their backs to fields, and the rear slopes there are the ones that face the weather. A skylight on such a slope earns its place by keeping a long upper landing or a stair well bright, since the front rooms already have their windows.

A ridge town makes exposure the biggest variable. Two houses of the same age, one near the top of the hill and one near the bottom, will want different flashing and sometimes different glass, so we reach a decision for each roof.

On a Carr Vale terrace the unit that earns its keep is a flat rooflight over the kitchen at the back. What wears there is the kerb and the covering around it, because water runs towards the opening from the slope above and sits when the fall is gentle. The glass and its seals carry their own checkpoints, and a blind or an inside lining can be changed from the kitchen without going near the roof. The survey looks at the fall of the kitchen roof, how the covering turns up at the kerb and where the rainwater from the bedroom roof above is sent, since a rooflight that sits in the path of that run-off collects more than its share. We also look at the ceiling beneath for sag or staining.