Rooflights and skylights in Wallington

Wallington is in the London Borough of Sutton, about 9.9 miles southwest of Charing Cross. Its character was set the day the railway station opened, because the line turned fields into a commuter suburb.

Before 1965 the town sat in the Municipal Borough of Beddington and Wallington. That year the borough merged into Sutton and Wallington became part of Greater London. The 2011 Census recorded 20,850 residents across two wards, so this is a compact place, and most of its streets are close enough to hear the trains.

The Victorian building did not stop at terraces. In the 1860s Nathaniel Bridges built Gothic revival villas here, and Holy Trinity Church was completed in 1870. Gothic revival houses were designed with steep gables, varied rooflines and decorative detail. A roof of that kind is a different job from a plain suburban pitch, and it deserves a survey that looks at the roof before it looks at the brochure.

Sutton has designated 15 conservation areas in total. Six of them sit near Wallington, which is unusually many for a town of this size.

The ones named in the borough's list are Holy Trinity Wallington, Wallington Green, Beddington Park, Beddington Village, Carew Manor and Church Lane Beddington. Some follow the Victorian church and its streets. Others follow the old village and park to the east and north. A house can be near one of them and still sit outside it, or sit inside it on a road you would not expect.

That is why we say the status is checked for the address, and do not guess from the postcode. Inside a conservation area the question is usually the face of the roof you can see from the street, and whether a new opening changes it. A rooflight on the rear slope is a different case from one on the front.

The station has services to Victoria, London Bridge and Epsom Downs. For a house near the line, that is the noise to plan for.

Rail noise is low and repeating. It comes in as a rumble through the ground and the air, and then a sharper note as each train passes. A bedroom in the roof hears it, because the roof is the thinnest part of the house, and a single pane of thin glass passes that kind of sound easily.

We do not quote figures for quiet. We describe it by what is built, and the build is what you would expect from an acoustic specification:

Most homes in Wallington suit one of three kinds of unit, and the right one depends on the room more than on the house.

A roof window is the usual choice for a loft bedroom or study. It sits in the slope, opens for air, and lets a room with low walls feel bigger. Choose the position by where the bed, desk or stairs will go, because the window cannot move later.

A rooflight on an extension is the choice for a kitchen or dining room with a flat roof. A fixed flat rooflight gives the most light for the least frame. A roof lantern gives a room height and a sense of the sky, and it needs a matching upstand and a careful spec, because it has more glass to ring. Our pages on flat roof rooflight installation and roof lantern installation cover the two in detail.

These are the points that come up when a Wallington owner starts to plan.