Skylights and rooflights set into Port Sunlight's clay-tiled cottage gables
Rooflight installation in Port Sunlight follows the building, since steep clay-tiled gables, timber-framed fronts and tall chimney stacks make a roofscape found nowhere else. A skylight in this village has to look settled in a protected setting and still keep the rain out.
5.2 road miles south of Liverpool city centre
Why are some Port Sunlight bedrooms so short of daylight?
- The gabled attic roomUnder a steep gable in one of the village's cottage groups, where the attic bedroom borrows a little light from a dormer and the sloping ceiling swallows most of it.
- The deep middle hallwayAlong the hallway of a deep-plan village house, where the stairs climb past a blank wall and the rooms on either side keep their daylight to themselves.
- The extended back kitchenAt the back of a house on the roads beyond the village, where a flat-roofed kitchen extension has taken over the patch of yard that used to supply the light.
Gabled attics, middle halls and extended kitchens
Skylight installation in Port Sunlight mixes the arts-and-crafts cottage groups laid out from 1888 with inter-war and post-war houses at the edge. The services listed here are the ones those roofs call for.
- Flat rooflights and lanterns for rear kitchens and lean-to additions on the roads around the village, set on an upstand above the covering.
- Roof windows for attic bedrooms under the steep gables, trimmed in between the rafters and flashed to the tile profile rather than to a standard kit.
- A rooflight with fogged glazing gets a modern sealed unit in the same opening, and the tiles around it are left alone.
- Slim, flush conservation units for the rear slopes of the village's cottage groups, where a rooflight has to sit low in the clay tiles and stay quiet from the road.
Cottage groups designed one by one, and the streets built around them
Port Sunlight was planned before most of it was built. William Hesketh Lever began the village in 1888 to house the people working at his soap factory on the bank of the Mersey, and he commissioned a long list of architects, so the houses came in groups rather than in rows of a single pattern. Walk down almost any road and the roofs change every few doors: steep clay-tile gables, jettied upper floors with timber framing, small dormers, tall chimney stacks and the occasional broad hipped roof. That variety is the point of the village, and it is also why a rooflight here is a considered choice and never a catalogue order.
Inside, many of these houses are deeper in plan than they look from the road. The stairs and hallway often sit in the middle, with rooms opening off either side, and the bedrooms in the roof sit under ceilings that follow the pitch. Some groups are terraces of several houses under one roof line, some are semi-detached pairs, and a number have been divided into flats over the years, which matters for permissions later on this page. Many also had small sculleries or rear additions from the start, with little pitched or lean-to roofs at the back.
Beyond the village boundary the housing is a different story. Back from the main road run streets of inter-war semis under hipped tile roofs, with post-war houses and bungalows beneath plainer concrete tiles among them. Rear extensions are common there, often with flat roofs, and a good share of the lofts have already been converted. We treat the village and its surrounding streets as one page because the same questions apply to both: what the roof is covered with, what lies under it, and what the neighbours and the council will expect to see from the street.
Most of our work lands on the back slope. Whatever faces the road is seen by everyone and, in the village, scrutinised by the council, so attic light is normally brought in from behind. A deep house with a stairwell in the middle is a different matter, because there the best light source may be a sun tunnel run through the roof space rather than any window in the slope at all.
Dormers in the village are small and often leaded, and chimneys carry their own flashing of lead or cement fillet. Those details show where the original builders expected water to travel, and a new opening is placed to leave them undisturbed, a rafter or two clear of each stack and well away from the valleys between gables.
| Where | Where you live | What goes in |
|---|---|---|
| Cottage groups | Steep-gabled terraces and pairs | Conservation roof window, rear slope |
| Deeper village houses | Central stairs, tall attic | Sun tunnel to the hallway |
| Rear lean-tos | Small pitched or flat roof | Flat rooflight on an upstand |
| Streets round the village | Inter-war hipped semi | Loft roof window, landing tunnel |
| Post-war bungalows | Low concrete-tiled roof | Roof window in the loft room |
Clay tiles, tall stacks and low ground beside the estuary
Low, fairly level ground on the Wirral bank of the Mersey carries the village. There are no hills here to break the wind, so weather arriving across the peninsula meets the roofs head on, and gusts come up off the estuary on the river side. The steep pitches shed rain quickly, which helps. What they do not do is protect the side and top flashings of a roof window from rain that is being blown sideways, so those are the details that get the attention.
Clay tiles set the pace of the work. A plain clay tile is small, hangs from a nib on the batten, and overlaps its neighbours in a tight pattern, so every cut matters. Older tiles can be brittle, and the ones around a new opening have to be lifted whole if they are to be reused. Where a tile has to be replaced, we look for one that matches in colour and texture, because a flat new tile among old hand-made ones shows from the street. The pitch also gets checked against the rated range of the unit, since some of the steepest gables sit at the top of what a standard flashing kit is designed for.
Chimneys are the next constraint. The tall stacks, often shared between two houses, sit where the roof planes meet, and a roof window placed too near one ends up with a crowded gutter and a very awkward flashing. Moving the opening a rafter or two away usually solves it, and the survey is where we work out which way to move it. Timber matters as much as tile: these roofs were framed by hand, and rafter spacing is rarely the same twice, so the trimmer and header that carry the new opening are sized to what we find, not to a standard layout.
Lead is the traditional answer around chimneys and valleys here, and where our flashing meets old lead we dress the two together so the join sheds water instead of trapping it.
- Mark the opening from inside. The loft shows where the rafters, purlin and chimney breast really are, so the position is fixed before a tile is touched.
- Lift the tiles by course. They come off whole and stacked in order, and the battens beneath are checked for soft timber.
- Frame and fit. The trimmers go in, then the roof window, with the flashing dressed to the tile profile.
- Relay and cut. The saved tiles go back round the unit, with matching ones added only where one has cracked.
Rear lean-tos and kitchen additions sit low and are easy to reach. A rooflight on their felt or single-ply goes onto a raised kerb, with the covering carried up the upstand to meet it. When the main roof is awkward to reach, working through the loft rather than from outside is often possible and keeps scaffolding to a minimum.
Wirral Council, a conservation area and houses with listed status
Wirral Council oversees the planning side of a village that is a conservation area with a large share of its buildings listed. Those two facts do different jobs. Conservation area status draws the council's eye to how the roofscape looks from public ground. Listing goes much further. Before a rooflight is cut into a listed house, listed building consent must be in hand, and it is a separate matter from any planning application. Historic England holds the list, and each entry says what is protected, so look yours up before ordering anything. How the process runs is covered under consent for a listed roof, while what planners look for in a protected area is covered in a separate guide.
Outside the village, most houses are in a simpler position. For a house that is neither listed nor under a direction removing its rights, whether a pitched-roof rooflight needs an application turns on a short list of size and position conditions. A flat, or a house converted to flats, does not carry the same rights as a single dwelling. Some properties in the village are also held on lease or carry conditions in their deeds, so read your own paperwork as well as the council's.
In the village or outside it, a rooflight is signed off by Wirral Council's building control service, which issues a completion certificate, or by a registered building control approver. The energy standards that apply to older homes have their own guide, and planning decisions and the conservation area boundary are at wirral.gov.uk.
The order of events is worth getting right. In a listed house, consent comes first, then the order for the unit, then the fitting. Spending money before the consent is in hand is the one mistake that cannot be undone, so the written quote for such a house is drawn up with the application in mind.
- Whether the house is listed, and which parts the entry names
- Single dwelling, or split into flats at some point
- Which slope faces the road and which faces the garden
- Any council direction removing rights on the street
- Any lease or deed condition on alterations to the roof
Port Sunlight roof questions, one house at a time
Our cottage in the village is listed. Can a rooflight go in the back slope?
Possibly, but only after listed building consent has been granted by Wirral Council. A small conservation unit on a rear slope hidden from the road has the strongest case, and we prepare the product details and drawings the application needs. Our written quote follows once the position is settled.
We have a flat-roofed kitchen extension just outside the village. Would a lantern suit it?
A lantern can suit a flat-roofed kitchen extension beyond the village, depending on the fall of the roof, the state of the deck and the width between the joists, all of which we check at the survey. It goes on a raised kerb above the covering. If the roof needs reworking first, the quote says so before any glass is ordered.
Do you cover the roads around the village as well as Port Sunlight itself?
The inter-war and post-war streets near the village come under this page, along with the village houses. A house inside the village gets the extra step of checking its listing and conservation status.
Will a roof window spoil the half-timbered, clay-tiled look of a village cottage?
A flush conservation unit set low in the clay tiles of a rear slope barely shows from the road, which is why the village's cottage groups take them better than a standard framed window would. We lift the tiles whole, relay them tight around the glazing and match any replacement to the old hand-made colour.
Can you reach a tall gabled attic without scaffolding the whole front?
A steep gable does not have to mean a full front scaffold. Most attic windows in the village go in on the rear slope, and where we can open the roof from inside the loft the outside access is kept to a short tower or a small section of scaffold.
Bromborough and Eastham south, Bebington inland
Bromborough and Eastham run on southwards along the river bank, while Bebington lies just inland and Birkenhead to the north, all of them covered too.
Free survey
Get a fixed quote in Port Sunlight
- No obligation
- We survey the roof before we price
- WhatsApp or phone, whichever suits
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.