Rooflights and skylights in Chatteris

From High Street's Georgian brick to Station Street's mansard roofs, we plan every rooflight and skylight in Chatteris around the view you will actually see from bed, sofa or sink.

Book a home visit See the view from here

From Peterborough: About 19 miles by road
Planning: Fenland District Council
County: Cambridgeshire

Fires that rebuilt Chatteris, and what they left over the bed

A frame edge across a shallow hip

No. 74 High Street's hipped slate roof is pitched shallowly, and a heavy frame across it cuts off sky a steeper roof would keep.
A bar across a mansard's steep slope

On Station Street's mansard roofs, the lower slope sits close to the eye, so a glazing bar placed there lands almost exactly where the view matters most.
A deep reveal in solid Victorian brick

Most of Chatteris was rebuilt in solid brick after its fires, and a square-cut reveal in a wall like that narrows the sky far more than a splayed one.
Glass that dulls on an open fen roof

Wind crossing drained, flat ground with nothing to break it carries dust onto a shallow pitch faster than a sheltered street would, and the pane dulls to match.

Raised ground, and a sky with nothing over it

Chatteris grew on raised ground that once stood clear of the surrounding Fenland wetlands, an island in a parish that now covers 6,099 hectares of drained, flat fen. With nothing rising between most roofs here and the horizon, a Chatteris rooflight rarely has a neighbour's roofline or a hill to plan around, only the frame edge, the bar and the reveal shape deciding how much of that open sky actually reaches the room below.

Open fen sky above a High Street bed
A mansard's steep sky from the sofa
Flat horizon over a Station Street sink

What we install and replace in Chatteris

Yellow brick and gault brick along the High Street

Chatteris's High Street runs through two centuries of brick in two different colours, and the roof above each house tends to follow its own logic rather than one town-wide pattern.

Chatteris House, a three-storey property built in 1828, stands in yellow brick with stone bands marking each storey and a hipped slate roof running back from the street. Further along, No. 74 High Street was built around 1820 in gault brick with the same hipped slate shape, but pitched much more shallowly, while No. 112 High Street is an early 19th-century gault brick cottage with narrow brick courses low down and a roof pitched steeply enough to carry pantiles rather than slate. Three houses on the same street, three different roof pitches, and each one changes what a rooflight can do once it is cut into the slope above.

A steep pantiled roof like No. 112's behaves close to how a standard roof window installation is designed to work: the unit sits flush in the pitch without unusual detailing, and the glass reads as a clean rectangle of sky from below. A shallow hipped slate roof like No. 74's asks more of the flashing and kerb detail around the opening, because a shallower pitch sheds water more slowly and the join between frame and slate has less fall to work with. Neither is a problem to solve on the day itself; both are decided at survey stage, looking at the actual pitch of that particular roof rather than assuming it runs like its neighbour.

A mansard roof and an older cottage on Station Street

Two houses a short walk from the High Street show how much roof age and shape can vary within a single Chatteris street.

Nos. 24 and 26 Station Street are early 19th-century houses built in local brick under a mansard roof finished in red pantiles, a shape with a steep lower slope and a shallower upper one meeting at a break partway up. No. 17 Station Street is older again: an 18th-century cottage, possibly timber-framed, rendered over brick foundations and roofed in thatch, once the Boars Head public house.

A mansard's steep lower slope sits closer to the eye from a room underneath it than a standard pitch does, which makes the exact line of a glazing bar matter more than usual. Fit a rooflight without a central bar into that steep lower slope and the sky reads as one uninterrupted rectangle from the pillow or the sofa below it. Fit a unit with a bar across the middle instead, and that bar lands almost exactly where the eye settles. Our guide to frame profiles and sightlines sets out why that difference matters more on a steep slope than a shallow one.

Station Street's range, from a mansard raised within the last two centuries to a cottage roofed in thatch, is a reminder that a survey looks at the specific roof in front of us rather than the street as a whole.

An abbey that shaped the town's oldest streets

Long before Chatteris House or Station Street's mansard went up, there was a Benedictine abbey where the town's Park Streets now stand.

Chatteris is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086, recorded as Ceterig or Caterig, and evidence of settlement in the area goes back to the Neolithic period. Around 980, a Benedictine nunnery, Chatteris Abbey, was founded on the site by Alfwen, niece of King Edgar, and it dominated the town until its dissolution in 1538. Remnants of the abbey were later incorporated into Park House, which stood until it was demolished in 1847; the town's Park Streets today still mark the former boundary of the abbey walls.

Nothing of the abbey survives above ground, and the streets built where it once stood are, like most of Chatteris, later brick housing rather than anything medieval. It is one more layer in a town where very little of the oldest fabric is left standing, and it sets up the next question: why so much of what remains today dates from one building period rather than several.

The fires that left Chatteris mostly Victorian

Chatteris burned down more than once, and what got rebuilt afterwards still shapes the walls a rooflight has to pass through today.

Fires in 1310, 1706 and 1864 destroyed most of the town's medieval and Georgian buildings, and as a result the greater part of Chatteris's housing dates from the late Victorian period onward. Only the tower of the parish church, dating from 1352, survived as a medieval structure through all three fires. That rebuilding history means a typical Chatteris wall, whether on the High Street or one of the streets running off it, is solid Victorian brick rather than a later cavity wall, built without the gap that became standard housebuilding practice later in the 20th century.

A solid wall carries straight through to the roof slope above it, and it usually gives a deeper reveal around a rooflight opening than a modern stud-and-plasterboard loft would. A deep reveal, cut square, works like a short tunnel: the glass itself can be generous, but the visible sky narrows the moment you are not looking straight up through the centre of it. Angle that plaster back from the frame instead of cutting it square, a splay rather than a square reveal, and the same glass opens up more sky without any change to the unit itself. It is a decision made once, at first-fix stage, and it is covered in full in our guide to choosing a reveal shape.

A conservation area built around St Peter and St Paul

The church tower that outlasted Chatteris's fires now stands inside a conservation area, and that status is worth checking against the address before any glass is ordered.

The Parish Church of St Peter and St Paul stands centrally in the town, its tower the one medieval survivor of 1352, restored in 1910 in a project that added new aisles while keeping the original nave arches. Fenland District Council lists Chatteris as one of ten conservation areas across the district, and the town also appears on Historic England's Heritage at Risk Register.

None of that rules out a rooflight. What it usually changes is the instinct on what fits: a slim, flush-fitting profile that sits close to the roof rather than standing proud of it, in keeping with a street the council has already decided is worth protecting. A conservation boundary runs along particular streets rather than across the whole town, so two houses a few doors apart on High Street or Station Street can fall on opposite sides of the line, and only checking the actual address against the map settles which paperwork, if any, a given job needs. Where it does apply, our conservation rooflight installation uses units built for exactly this kind of street.

Raised ground in a drained fen

Chatteris grew on a patch of ground that once stood clear of the wetland around it, and that history still shapes the sky over its roofs.

Chatteris developed as a raised "island" within the Fenland wetlands, a geography that shaped its early isolation and still marks it out from the flat parish around it, which covers 6,099 hectares in total. The surrounding fen is drained by the Forty Foot and Sixteen Foot drains and sits in one of the lowest-lying parts of the United Kingdom, much of it below sea level. Some of the town's older buildings show Dutch architectural influences, a legacy of the 17th-century Dutch-led drainage projects that made this land farmable in the first place.

Standing on raised ground with drained, flat fen running out on every side means a Chatteris roof rarely has a taller neighbour or a rise in the land cutting the sky short. Fenland District, formed in 1974, brought Chatteris together with Wisbech, March and Whittlesey under one planning authority, and each of those towns shares something of the same flat horizon; our pages on rooflight installation in March and rooflight installation in Wisbech cover how it plays out there. Openness on its own does not decide anything, though. It only pays off if the frame edge and any bar are placed to make use of that sky, rather than left wherever the roof structure happened to allow.

Glass that stays clear on an exposed fen roof

A roof with nothing around it to break the wind is a demanding place for glass to stay clean without help, and Chatteris's position gives it exactly that.

A shallow-pitched roof like No. 74 High Street's hipped slate sheds rain more slowly than a steep one, and dirt and algae build up faster as a result, because there is less speed in the run-off to carry debris away. Wind moving unbroken across drained, open fen carries dust and organic matter onto a roof surface with nothing standing over it to catch that dust first.

Two separate things keep a rooflight looking clean above a fen roof like this: what happens on top of the pane, and what happens inside the edge of it. On top, a coating that reacts with sunlight breaks down the organic film windblown dust leaves behind, so the next shower rinses it off rather than a ladder being needed. Inside the edge, a sealed unit depends on the bond between the panes holding firm for decades, and when that bond gives way on a roof exposed to fen wind, condensation appears between the layers of glass rather than on the surface, where no amount of cleaning reaches it. That is a different fault from a dirty pane and it takes a different fix: our misted and failed rooflight replacement service swaps the whole unit rather than attempting to patch a seal that has already gone, and our guide to keeping rooflight glass clear for years covers the specification that avoids reaching that point at all.

Checks made in Chatteris before any tiles are lifted

Whichever street the house sits on, Georgian High Street brick, a Station Street mansard, or a roof further out on the flat fen, the same first step applies before anything is cut.

The first visit to a High Street or Station Street address starts with the room, not the roof above it. Whoever uses that room most, lying in bed, sat at a table or stood at the sink, decides where the eye actually settles, and the sketch is drawn from that spot. A steep pantiled slope like No. 112's puts the frame at a different distance from that eye than a shallow hipped slate roof like No. 74's does, so the same drawing looks different from one address to the next.

The same visit settles several other things at once:

the pitch and structure of that specific roof, checked in person rather than assumed from a photograph of the street
whether the address sits inside the mapped conservation boundary around St Peter and St Paul
whether the work needs to be notified under the Building Regulations, and taking that step on rather than leaving it to the homeowner
the sightline sketch itself, drawn from the bed, seat or worktop that matters most in that room

Fenland District Council is the planning authority for Chatteris, and it is the address, not the street name, that settles each of those points, since houses sharing a postcode can sit on either side of a conservation boundary. Work goes ahead to current Building Regulations wherever the house sits, and the sketch itself is explained in full on our sightline sketch page.

Answers for High Street and Station Street homeowners

Does the conservation area around the church rule out a modern rooflight?

No, though it changes what gets specified. Homes inside the boundary around St Peter and St Paul tend to suit a low-profile unit that sits close to the roof rather than standing proud of it, a decision made once the address itself has been checked against the mapped boundary rather than assumed from the street name. Plenty of houses on a protected street already carry a rooflight that reads as part of the roof rather than an addition to it.

Is a rooflight in a mansard roof different from one in a hipped slate roof?

The glass itself can be identical. What changes is how close the slope sits to the eye: a mansard's steep lower slope is nearer a seated or lying eye than a standard pitch is, so a glazing bar placed without thought lands closer to the middle of the view than it would elsewhere.

Why do Chatteris's older brick walls need a different reveal to a modern extension?

Because most of the town's housing was rebuilt in solid Victorian brick after the fires of 1310, 1706 and 1864, without the cavity a later stud wall would have. A solid wall gives a deeper reveal, and a square-cut one narrows the sky more than a splayed one does for the same size of glass.

Does the flat land around Chatteris make glass dirtier faster?

It can, on a shallow pitch especially, since wind crossing open, drained fen with nothing to break it carries dust straight onto the roof. A self-cleaning outer coating and a sound edge seal are worth discussing at the same time as the frame, rather than after the glass has already started to dull.

From a Georgian townhouse on the High Street to a cottage roofed in thatch on Station Street, Clearview Skylights installs and replaces rooflights, roof windows and skylights throughout Chatteris and the rest of the area around Peterborough. Our skylight and rooflight installation page covers the full range of work we take on, what affects the cost of a rooflight sets out how pricing is worked through, and areas we cover lists the other towns nearby.

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