Rooflights and skylights in Burgess Hill

Burgess Hill is a place whose roofs were baked locally. That history explains why the coverings here are so often clay, and it shapes how a new opening is cut into them.

Small-scale brick and tile manufacture was established by the early 17th century. The railway arrived in 1841, and Burgess Hill station opened in 1877. Between 1850 and 1880 the population grew to about 4,500, which is a very fast change for a place that had been a handful of workshops and fields. Streets of houses went up within walking distance of the line, and the town has gone on growing since. By the 2011 census it had 30,635 residents, the largest settlement in Mid Sussex.

For a rooflight, that past has a practical meaning. Handmade and early machine-made clay tiles are not interchangeable with a modern concrete tile. They vary in thickness, they are laid to gauges that differ from one roof to the next, and they need lifting carefully so that the same tiles can be laid back round the new frame. A neat finish depends on keeping tiles whole, so the opening is planned around the tile courses, not the other way round.

This is the conservation area where the roofs are part of the architecture. The position for any one house is checked for the address, and the materials decide the approach.

The Silverdale Road and Birchwood Grove Road area was designated in 1982. Mid Sussex describes large Victorian and Edwardian houses standing in big gardens, built after the station drew wealthy residents to the town. The materials named are brick, clay tile hanging and render, with ornamental ridge tiles along the roofs.

Ornamental ridge tiles change the brief. A ridge that has been shaped for display is a feature that an opening should sit well below and well away from. On a big house the slopes are long, and there is usually room to place a rooflight lower down and to the rear, where it is less likely to be read from the road. Whether a street-facing slope is acceptable at all is a question for the council, and the answer is taken from its own guidance for the address.

St. John's is a conservation area with a church, a chapel and a horizon. A rooflight here is judged in the setting of those buildings, so the survey starts outside.

The St. John's conservation area was designated in 1989. It covers St. John's Park and nearby residential roads, and includes two listed buildings: St. John's Church and Providence Strict Baptist Chapel. The council also notes views to the South Downs.

Two listed buildings in an area mean that, for a house next to either, the question of setting arises. A rooflight that would be unremarkable elsewhere may be examined more closely when it is seen alongside a listed roof. The checking is done for the address, and we would rather know the answer before the quote than after it. If a house is itself listed, consent is needed whatever the size of the opening, and the work waits for it.

The research on Burgess Hill places a railway through the middle of town and the A23 to the west, reached via the A2300. Those are the two corridors we listen for here, along with the oldest noise of all, rain on glass.

The station opened in 1877 and the line has shaped the town ever since. A rooflight on the side of a roof that faces the track lets the sound of trains through the thinnest part of the room, before walls and rafters have had a say. The A23 lies west of the town, reached by the A2300, so a house on the western side may hear a steady road note that an eastern street does not. Neither sound is constant, and neither is universal. That is why the survey involves listening in the room, at the hour it matters.

The fixes are specification, not mystery. A laminated acoustic inner pane damps sound that a plain pane passes. Panes of different thickness in one unit stop the two layers ringing together. Compressed gaskets around the sash close the gaps that let noise in, and an upstand that is lined and insulated stops the kerb acting as a drum. The guide to keeping road and rail noise out through a rooflight goes through each choice.

Every quote comes with a quiet spec, a one-page note for the room in question. It records what we heard, the build we propose and how the upstand and seals are finished.

At the survey we stand in the room and listen. In a terrace bedroom that means noting which slope faces the track or the road, and how the room sounds with the old window shut. In a flat-roofed extension it means looking at the glass, the bars and the upstand, and asking how the room sounds in heavy rain. All of it is written down in plain words.

The spec then names the glazing: laminated acoustic glass where the room calls for it, pane thickness, the width of the cavity and the seals. It names the upstand and how it is insulated. The page on the quiet spec shows what the document contains, and the note on what goes into a quiet rooflight specification explains the reasons behind each line. The job is covered by our 10-year workmanship guarantee.