Bromborough's cottages round the green, and the skylights or rooflights to suit
Brick cottages round a village green built for candle-works families, interwar semis along the old Chester road and estate houses under plain concrete tiles make up most of the roofs where rooflight installation in Bromborough is wanted. A skylight here usually goes into a low, fairly sheltered slope close to the Mersey.
7.1 road miles south of Liverpool city centre
Where the daylight gives out in Bromborough houses
- The village cottage loftBromborough Pool cottages are small, and a loft room under the slope has one tiny gable window at best, which is why owners there start thinking about the roof itself.
- The semi's middle landingA Spital semi from the 1930s has a landing buried at its centre, with no wall facing the weather, so the stairs stay dim however bright the rest of the house is.
- The extended estate kitchenA 1950s estate house that gained a rear extension now has a kitchen a long way back from the garden door, and its flat roof is the only place a bright opening can go.
Cottage lofts, semi landings and estate kitchens
From brick cottages in the model village to interwar semis and post-war estate houses, skylight installation in Bromborough covers a short but varied run of roofs, and these are the services they most often call for.
- A lantern over a widened kitchen or dining room at the back of a Spital semi gives height and light to a room that began as a lean-to.
- Flat rooflights suit the rear extensions on the estate houses, the glass sitting on a raised kerb that lifts it clear of the surrounding felt or single-ply.
- Roof windows for the concrete-tiled slopes of estate houses and semis, where an even rafter run makes a clean opening straightforward to cut.
- Replacement sealed units for older rooflights that misted years ago, common on extensions built when double glazing was new to the area.
Cottages round a green, then semis along the Chester road
Bromborough Pool is where the story of local roofs begins. From the 1850s Price's Patent Candle Company built a model village there for its workers: brick cottages in short terraces and groups around a village green, with gardens and a sense of order that ordinary Victorian rows rarely had. The roofs are small and steep enough to shed water quickly, covered in slate or tile that has weathered to a soft, even tone. That evenness is exactly what a new opening can spoil, so any rooflight there is planned as part of a whole roofscape and never as a one-off.
The next wave of building followed the road and the railway. New Chester Road, the old route south, gathered ribbons of Edwardian and interwar houses, and the semi-detached house took over. These have hipped or gabled roofs in clay or concrete tile, a front bay, a hallway running straight back and a landing in the middle with no window. Spital and the roads either side of the line show this stage well. Many of those houses have since had loft conversions, usually with a dormer at the back or a pair of roof windows, and almost all have a kitchen that was pushed out into the garden.
After the war the town filled in towards the Mersey and the dock side. Estates of brick-faced semis and short terraces went up with low-pitched concrete-tiled roofs, sometimes with porches and flat-roofed garages attached. Their roofs are uniform and easy to work on, with regular rafter spacing and a long, simple slope. A good deal of that housing now belongs to people extending sideways and backwards, which produces flat roofs at the joins, each with its own height, fall and covering.
Then there are pockets of newer building on old industrial land near the river, where recent brick-and-render houses carry factory-made trusses instead of rafters. A truss roof limits what can be cut, because the webs between the chords are structural. A roof window in a trussed roof usually sits between two trusses, and the width is chosen to fit the gap that is actually there.
Loft rooms are worth a word on their own. A cottage loft is low and the rafters are close, so one well-placed unit does more than two cramped ones. A semi loft has more floor but is often fitted out with a hatch and a ladder, and the stair below it may be dark enough that the same opening can serve both the room and the landing beneath.
| Area | The house | The rooflight |
|---|---|---|
| Bromborough Pool | Model-village brick cottage | Conservation rooflight on a rear slope |
| Along New Chester Road | Edwardian or interwar semi | Roof windows; sun tunnel to the landing |
| Spital | 1930s semi with a rear kitchen | Lantern on the extension |
| Post-war estates | Low-pitched tiled semi | Pair of roof windows in the loft |
| Riverside infill | Newer trussed roof | Roof window set between trusses |
Low ground, an estuary breeze and tiles that need a careful cut
Bromborough sits on the Wirral bank of the Mersey, on low ground that falls gently towards the water. There are no hills to speak of between the houses and the estuary, so roofs here lack the open exposure of the north Wirral coast. What they do get is a steady breeze funnelled up and down the river, damper air than the inland towns and, close to the dock and the industrial frontage, a little salt that works on exposed metal fixings. A rooflight frame, screws or a cheap flashing strip that would last on a sheltered inland roof age sooner here, so the specification matters.
Concrete interlocking tile is the dominant covering on the interwar and post-war roofs. It is heavy, the profiles are deep, and the makes have changed over the decades. The challenge with a roof window is the flashing: a kit designed for one tile profile fits another badly, and the gap in a deep profile can be generous. The answer is to match the flashing to the tile you have, with the lead or aluminium apron formed to suit, so water runs out onto the roof and not behind it. How that flashing is formed round a window is shown in the flashing detail for slate and tile roofs. On the cottages round the green the covering is lighter and the pitch steeper, so the work is more delicate and more of the visible roof is disturbed.
Flat roofs are the other half of the job. Estate houses grew rear extensions in every decade after the war, and those roofs carry a mix of old bitumen felt, torch-on membrane and single-ply, often with parapets of different heights. A rooflight goes on a kerb or upstand, the covering is dressed up its face and the junction is sealed so water cannot track in at the corner. The upstand guide shows what that means in practice.
Access is rarely the difficulty. Most Bromborough streets are wide enough for a tower, and many houses have side access to the back garden. The exceptions are the short cottage terraces around the green, where there is little room for equipment and the roofs are small enough to be worked from inside and above in quick succession. A typical roof window on one of the post-war semis runs through four stages.
Dust sheets and access
Floors and stairs are covered, the loft is cleared around the opening and the tower goes up at the back.
Cut and frame
The tiles come off, the rafter is trimmed with a doubled header and the new frame is fixed and levelled.
Flash and relay
The flashing is built to the tile profile, the tiles are relaid to it and the underlay is dressed into the gutter.
Lining and clean
The reveal is boarded and made good inside, then the house is cleaned and checked before we leave.
Wirral Council, one named village and the building control route
Bromborough comes under Wirral Council for planning, the same authority as Birkenhead and Port Sunlight. Unless an Article 4 direction or a listing applies, most houses can take a pitched-roof rooflight without an application, so long as it stays within the permitted development limits for a skylight. We check those conditions against your own roof before quoting, so you are not left carrying a risk on an answer you read online.
The place where that general rule needs a second look is Bromborough Pool. The village the candle company built is protected as a conservation area, and some of its buildings are listed. Conservation area status alone leaves the right to fit a rooflight in place. Article 4 directions are what take it away, and Wirral Council made one for Bromborough Pool Village in 1990, so what it covers is checked for your house, and a listed cottage needs listed building consent before any tile is lifted. The village is also a designed group, so the council pays close attention to what is visible from the green. A conservation rooflight on a rear slope, flush with the tiles, is the usual choice. For what councils tend to look for on a protected street, read how a conservation area treats a new rooflight; the conservation pages on wirral.gov.uk will tell you whether your street is inside the boundary. Port Sunlight, the better-known model village a little way north, is dealt with separately.
Flats are a separate case. A flat or maisonette has no permitted development rights for rooflights at all, so a converted house or a block of flats near the dock needs an application, and in some leasehold buildings the freeholder's permission as well. Even where nothing is protected, a slope facing the road can raise questions, and planning for a window on the front slope sets out when.
The Building Regulations arrive from a different direction. For a Bromborough rooflight the notification goes to Wirral Council's building control, and we make it on your behalf. Our answer on what Building Regulations ask of the finished unit covers the standard the work is measured against.
Before the survey, it helps to know a few things about your own address. They shape what we can offer and how soon, and none of them takes more than a minute to find out.
- Whether the cottage is listed, and so needs consent first
- Any Article 4 direction on the street
- Freehold or leasehold, for converted houses and flats
- Which slope faces the road or the green
- Whether a trussed roof limits the opening width
Bromborough roofs, answered street by street
Our cottage near the green at Bromborough Pool is in the conservation area, so is a rooflight out of the question?
A rooflight on a Pool cottage is often possible, but the answer depends on whether the cottage is listed and what the Bromborough Pool Article 4 direction covers on your street. A flush conservation unit on the rear slope has the best chance. We check the position with Wirral Council before you order anything, and the quote names the exact unit.
We have a 1930s semi in Spital with a pitch-black landing. Is a sun tunnel enough?
For a dark landing in a Spital semi a sun tunnel is frequently enough. It runs from the tile slope down through the loft to a diffuser in the landing ceiling, and it needs no structural opening. If the loft is already boarded or converted we look at a roof window instead, and we tell you which suits the house after the survey.
Do the Rake, Spital and the roads by the dock count as Bromborough for your quotes?
The Rake, Spital and the roads by the dock are all worked on exactly as the village centre is. Port Sunlight and Eastham have their own pages, which deal with their own conservation and housing questions.
Does a trussed roof on newer riverside infill limit how wide a roof window can be?
On the recent brick-and-render houses built on old industrial land, the factory-made trusses are structural, so the opening is sized to the gap between two of them and not to a catalogue width. A pair of narrower windows side by side, one in each bay between trusses, will often light a room better than one wide unit that cannot be fitted.
Can a rooflight go onto the flat roof of an estate-house extension without disturbing the covering around it?
On a roof of mixed history the kerb is built into whatever covering is already there. On the felt, torch-on and single-ply extensions common on post-war estates, the covering is dressed up the face of the upstand and sealed at every corner, and where parapets rise to different heights the kerb is set so water has one clear way off.
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Get a fixed quote in Bromborough
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What happens next: we arrange a survey at a time that suits you, measure the roof and the room, then send a fixed written quote. Nothing is booked until you say yes.