Do you work outside Gloucester?

The short answer

Yes. Severn Skylights Gloucester works across Gloucester and thirty miles by road around the city, which takes in the whole of Gloucestershire that most people think of as Gloucestershire, plus a good deal of the country either side of it. That is Cheltenham and the villages around it, Stroud and the valleys, Tewkesbury and the vale, the Cotswolds east to Cirencester and Northleach, the Forest of Dean across to the Wye, north to Ledbury and the Malverns, and south through Thornbury and Yate towards the Bristol fringe. The radius is a road measurement rather than a line drawn on a map, and this page sets out what sits inside it and why the distance is drawn where it is. Town by town detail is on the areas pages.

Thirty miles by road, measured the way a van actually travels

Thirty miles as the crow flies and thirty miles by road are very different things in this county, and the difference is the Severn, the Cotswold escarpment and the Stroud valleys. A village eighteen miles away in a straight line can be a thirty-five minute drive round the head of a valley. A town twenty-eight miles up the A38 is a straightforward run.

So the measurement used is road distance from Gloucester, because that is what governs the working day. It decides whether a crew can be on a roof early enough to strip the covering, form the opening, set the unit and close the roof before the light goes, which is the sequence the whole job is planned around. The roof is never left open overnight, and a realistic travel time is part of making that promise hold.

North: Tewkesbury, the vale, Ledbury and the Malverns

Straight up the A38 and the M5 the radius reaches Tewkesbury, Ashchurch, Bredon, Twyning and the vale villages, then on into the Ledbury area and the southern Malverns. Newent and the Newent hills sit comfortably inside it.

The roof stock here is Severn Vale red brick with clay tile and slate, timber frame through Tewkesbury and around Newent, and a lot of two-storey rear additions with a lean-to roof at 22 to 30 degrees over the kitchen. Flood history along the Severn and the Avon runs through this whole area, and it makes homeowners here more careful than most about anyone putting a new opening in a roof. That caution is reasonable, and it is answered with the perimeter detail rather than reassurance.

East: Cheltenham, the wolds and out to Cirencester

Cheltenham is nine miles away and the whole borough sits well inside the radius: Charlton Kings, Prestbury, Leckhampton, Up Hatherley, Warden Hill, Swindon Village and Bishops Cleeve. Beyond it the wolds open out through Andoversford, Northleach, Bourton-on-the-Water, Stow-on-the-Wold, Chipping Campden and Blockley in the north Cotswolds, and south east to Cirencester, Fairford, Lechlade, Bibury and Tetbury.

This is where the work changes most. Central Cheltenham is Regency stucco with Welsh slate and mansard roofs behind parapets, much of it listed. The wolds villages are Cotswold stone slate in diminishing courses, torched from below, where an opening means taking the courses back up the slope and re-laying them with reclaimed material sourced to match. Those two coverings account for the majority of the conservation work in the diary, and they are covered on the conservation rooflight installation page.

South: Stroud, the valleys, Dursley, Thornbury and Yate

South of the city the radius covers Stonehouse, Cainscross, Stroud, Rodborough, Minchinhampton, Nailsworth, Chalford, Bisley and Painswick, then Dursley, Wotton-under-Edge, Berkeley and Frampton on Severn along the vale, and reaches Thornbury, Yate and Chipping Sodbury at the southern edge.

The Stroud valleys are the hardest ground in the whole area and it is worth being straight about why. Terraces step up the hillside so a cottage is one storey at the front and three at the back, access is by shared lane, footpath or steps, retaining walls sit tight against the elevation, and there is often nowhere flat to stand a tower. Scaffold gets hand-carried in, sometimes a long way, and lantern glass may need extra hands where a lorry cannot get within fifty metres. That is looked at properly during the survey so the figure holds rather than moving once the crew sees the lane.

West: the Forest of Dean, Ross-on-Wye, Monmouth and Chepstow

Over the Severn and into the Forest, the radius takes in Newnham on Severn, Blakeney, Cinderford, Drybrook, Mitcheldean, Coleford and Lydney, and reaches Ross-on-Wye to the north west, Monmouth to the west and Chepstow to the south west.

Forest roofs are their own thing: local sandstone walls, Welsh slate at 40 to 45 degrees, often over sarking boards rather than open battens, in former mining terraces with thick walls. The weather is a real factor here. Driving rain arrives from the south west with the Wye valley behind it, so head laps go beyond the manufacturer’s minimum and side flashings are taken wider than the standard kit dimension. The steeper pitch also changes the room: the reveal is a taller box, the head of the frame sits well above standing reach, and a rod-operated or electrically operated unit earns its place.

What thirty miles buys, and why the line sits there

A service radius is really a statement about how a day is run. Within thirty miles by road, the following all hold together.

A survey can be done at a time that suits the household rather than at a time that suits the travelling.
A crew is on the scaffold early enough to open a roof and close it the same day.
Coming back to fit a blind, check a mechanism or complete an internal reveal is a short trip rather than a scheduling problem.
The Building Control notification is going to one of a handful of authorities the process is already familiar with.
The roof covering is one of the six or seven types that recur here, and reclaimed material can be sourced from yards that are also inside the radius.

That last point is more useful than it sounds. Matching a Cotswold stone slate or a handmade clay tile depends on knowing which yards hold what, and that knowledge is local.

The covering changes across thirty miles, and so does the job

You can cross four completely different roof traditions inside an hour here, which is unusual. It is the main reason no figure is published on this site: the same unit means a different job depending on where it is going.

Where	Typical covering	What tends to decide the job
Gloucester terraces, Kingsholm, Barnwood, Hempsted	Clay plain tile and Welsh slate on red brick	Short run of slope on a narrow rear addition
Longlevens, Hucclecote, Warden Hill, Charlton Kings	Concrete interlocking tile on interwar hips	The hip shortens the usable rectangle more than people expect
Quedgeley, Abbeydale, Brockworth, Bishops Cleeve, Ashchurch, Yate	Concrete tile on trussed rafters	Truss webs stay whole, so the bay width sets the unit size
Painswick, Bibury, Northleach, Chipping Campden	Cotswold stone slate, diminishing courses	Courses taken back and re-laid, reclaimed slate sourced to match
Central Cheltenham, Montpellier, Lansdown, Pittville	Welsh slate mansards behind parapets	Consent, and a shallow upper slope below roof window pitch
Coleford, Cinderford, Mitcheldean, Lydney	Welsh slate on sandstone, often sarked	Exposure, increased laps, steep pitch and reach
Stroud, Chalford, Rodborough, Nailsworth	Stone slate and Welsh slate on valley sides	Access, scaffold handling and delivery

Finding out whether your address sits inside it

The quick version is that if you can drive to Gloucester in under about forty-five minutes on normal roads, you are almost certainly inside the radius. The reliable version is to send the address and let it be checked properly, because the road distance from a village on the far side of a valley is rarely what it looks like on a map.

Email info@severnskylightsgloucester.co.uk with the address, a photograph of the roof from the garden or the street, a photograph of the room from inside, and the covering if you know it. Four things make a first reply genuinely useful, and the postcode is one of them, because on a Gloucestershire roof the covering and the conservation status are often obvious from it.

What happens after the address is checked

The process is the same wherever in the radius the house sits. An indicative range comes back by email first, based on the photographs, the covering, a rough size and the address, so nobody spends an afternoon on a survey for a project that was never going to work financially. Then a survey, at a time that suits, where the covering is identified properly, the structure is recorded and the access is looked at. Then a fixed price, itemised so it is clear what is unit, what is labour, what is scaffold and what is Building Control. Then a date.

Access and travel are priced into the survey rather than added afterwards, which is why a Chalford cottage up a flight of steps and a Quedgeley semi with a driveway carry different figures for the same unit. Fifteen years of working these roofs is what makes that judgement quick. The full installation detail is on the skylight and rooflight installation page, and the written guides at guides go further into individual questions.