Skylights & Rooflights in RiponLight for the cathedral city's cottages, terraces and bungalows

Ripon lies about 27.1 road miles north-west of York. Its housing is older and more varied than the size of the place suggests.

Ripon is one of the smallest cities in England, built around its cathedral and the market square. The streets running off the square hold Georgian and Victorian houses in stone and brick, with terraces and cottages tucked into the lanes between. Out beyond the centre you find the twentieth-century growth: semis from the middle of the last century, bungalows, and newer estates with tiled roofs and shallow pitches.

A rooflight job in a place like this begins with working out which of those roofs you have. A slate pitch on a three-storey town house, a pantile cottage roof and a concrete-tile bungalow each want a different frame, a different flashing and a different way of opening the roof.

Ripon has a historic core, so the first question on many streets is whether the house sits inside a conservation area.

Planning here is decided by North Yorkshire Council, which absorbed Harrogate Borough Council's duties in April 2023. In Ripon a rooflight on a house is often permitted development, so long as the glass stays inside the limits in the skylight planning permission guide. Ripon's centre is a different matter, because the area around the cathedral and the market square is the sort of place where the council takes a close interest in what is visible from the street.

The council can tell you whether your road is covered by an Article 4 direction, which removes permitted development on particular streets, and whether the building is listed. Ask before you order anything. If the answer is that the front slope needs an application, the back slope often does not, and that is where we would put the glass in most Ripon terraces anyway.

In the old streets off the market square, the street-facing slope belongs to the neighbours as much as to you.

From a survey in Ripon

Older Ripon roofs are often a patchwork of materials, and each one is cut and flashed in its own way.

Clay pantiles are made in an S-shaped curve, and they lap over each other unevenly. A flashing for a roof window has to follow that profile closely, otherwise rain can find its way beneath the edge. On a pantile cottage we lift the tiles by hand, keep every sound one and fit a flashing kit made for the profile. On slate the approach is different: slates are thin and can be brittle with age, so we take them off one at a time and refit them tight around the frame.

Behind the covering, older roofs may carry hand-cut timbers that are not at the spacing a modern window expects. We open the roof, look at the rafters and frame a trimmed opening with new timbers so that the weight is carried properly.

A loft room needs light and air more than anything, and the roof window is what supplies both.

In Ripon's Victorian houses the loft often has good height at the centre. In a mid-century semi it is lower, and a roof window set a little higher on the slope makes the most of it. Either way, a roof window should be chosen for how you will use the room. A top-hung window opens wide for a view and a breeze, and suits a bedroom or study. A centre-pivot window turns on a central bar and is easier to clean from inside.

If you are thinking of a full loft conversion, the stair is the difficult part. On a two-storey house, escape from the new room has to be by a protected stair rather than a window, since a window only works as an escape route on a storey within 4.5m of the ground. A roof window is fine for light and air. It cannot stand in for the stairs.

Around the edge of Ripon, the rooflight question is usually about a flat roof at the back of the house.

A lot of bungalows and later houses have had a kitchen or sitting room added behind, often with a flat roof and a deep floor plan. The garden end is bright and the house end is dim. A flat rooflight or a lantern over the dim end brings the light back across the room.

Lanterns generally stand taller than 150mm. Added to a roof that already exists, it can call for an application or a written answer from the council, which a flat rooflight might not. Our roof lantern installation page covers what is involved, and the survey is where we find out what your particular roof can carry.

Ripon extensions from earlier decades often still have their first plastic dome or early double-glazed unit overhead.

You can tell from the room below. A dome turns cloudy and brittle, a sealed unit mists between its panes, and a frame lets in a draught or leaves a stain on the ceiling. If the whole rooflight is replaced, frame and glass, that is a controlled fitting and notifiable under Building Regulations, and we arrange the notification. Where only the glass has failed, we can swap just the sealed unit, which is not notifiable. Our misted and failed rooflights page helps you tell which of the two you have.

A new replacement has to meet current thermal limits too, so a modern rooflight is warmer than the one it replaces.

Nearly everyone who asks us to work in Ripon stays in the house while we do, so we arrange the job around their routine.

Before a tile is lifted, the floors, stairs and furniture closest to the work are sheeted over, and the space is screened off wherever the layout allows. You will know each morning which rooms we need. By evening the roof has been closed in, and the rubbish goes off in our van. The same team stays from the first dust sheet to the last sweep.

Trimmers, upstands, flashings, membranes and insulation never get seen once the plaster is on, so we do them as carefully as the finish and take photographs first. Those photos come to you when we hand over, in a folder alongside the manufacturers' guarantees, the product specifications, our 10-year workmanship guarantee and, if the job had to be notified, the Building Control certificate.

A Ripon cottage with a narrow stair needs the dust sheets laid before anything else comes through the door.

From a survey in Ripon

The survey is free, and it is the visit where the roof, the room below and the council's likely view are all settled together.

We have no shop or office, so the visit is at your house. Someone goes into the loft or up to the roof, measures the room below, and explains what the council is likely to want. A written quote follows, with every cost on a separate line, and it comes with the plan for each day.

Ripon's older streets often have steep, narrow stairs and low landings, so tell us when you book if the loft hatch is awkward to reach. We can then bring a shorter ladder and plan where the long glazing units will be carried in, rather than finding out on the morning that they will not turn the corner by the bathroom door. A photograph of the stairwell is useful.

Our work reaches the places around Ripon too, such as Boroughbridge, Killinghall and Thirsk. The form below is the easiest way to start, and WhatsApp works as well.