South Normanton is an ex-mining village of about 16,000 people, two miles east of Alfreton. Before 1888 it was a small hamlet concerned with farming. In that year the only houses were a few cottages around the church of St Michael, on the hilltop in the village centre, and the windmill. The settlement was clustered along the main road, now Church Street and Market Street.
Around 1921 the village began its main industry of mining, and many terraced houses were built to accommodate the workforce. Some houses also began to go up along Market Street and Mansfield Road, and these were higher cost housing for the private market. Later came council housing, and the major roads, including the M1, made the village easier to reach for car owners. The colliery closed in 1952, with B Winning following in 1964 and A Winning in 1969.
That sequence is useful to us because it tells us how the houses were laid out. Terraces built for a workforce are laid out close together, and the usual terrace plan puts the kitchen at the back, away from the street. Council-built houses from later years have more regular plans, and the private houses on the main roads have their own layouts. Each has dark spots in different places.
In a terrace, the dark spots are usually the back kitchen and the landing. In a later semi, they are more often an internal hallway or a bathroom with no outside wall. A rear extension, wherever it appears, tends to have a flat roof that takes a rooflight well.
The East Midlands Designer Outlet sits near the edge of the settlement close to the M1, but for a rooflight job the edge of the village matters less than the street you live in. Give us the street and the room, and we start the survey from there.
One practical point follows from that layout. A terrace shares walls and sometimes roof timbers with its neighbours. A new opening in the rear slope has to sit well clear of the party wall, so the framing and the flashing stay inside your own roof. The survey measures that distance and pencils it onto the plan, and it can move the window a little along the slope from where you first pictured it.
Where a house has a deeper plot and garden, access for a tower is simpler. Where houses sit closer together, we ask about parking on the day. None of this is a problem, but it is better settled before anyone arrives with a unit on a van.
