Roofers in Bramber

Bramber stands on the west bank of the Adur, at the point where the river breaks through the South Downs. Horsham District Council's conservation area leaflet, dated December 1997, lists unpainted field flint buildings and walls among the village's distinctive features. Field flint is picked from the land rather than split, and it is laid in rough courses with lime mortar. It is a hard stone and a stubborn partner for a roof. The joints are irregular, the faces are uneven, and a ruler-straight band of lead will not sit tight on it. Anyone who has watched a flashing peel off a rubble wall knows the sealant was only ever a cosmetic cover. Because the leaflet counts the bare, unpainted stone as part of the village's character, we keep the work in lead and mortar, plain and unpainted, and avoid coatings that change how the wall looks from the lane.

1.1 Building a flashing into flint

Where a roof stops against a flint wall or a flint-and-brick chimney, the flashing, a dressed strip of lead that bridges roof and wall, is tucked into a groove cut along a mortar course, then wedged and pointed. Where the roof hangs over a flint gable, the verge (the edge where the covering stops at the gable) gets tiles cut to the wall line, bedded and clipped, so water runs onto the roof and not down the stone. On a gable wall the groove steps up the courses, and each step has to follow the stone in front of it. A bead of mastic over the top may help for a season, but it is a stopgap for a joint that should be built in. Royston's brochure lists lead codes 4, 5 and 6 for flashings, and the thicker codes suit exposed or heavily worked details. Our lead roofing and leadwork page sets out how each dressing goes together.

1.2 Chimney stacks, flaunching and what a patch costs

Flint-and-brick stacks are exposed on all four faces. The flaunching (the sloped mortar cap round the base of the pots) cracks, the lead at the base lifts, and water works down inside the breast, often to appear as a brown stain on a bedroom wall. A small failure is a small job: a patch to a lead corner, or a new bed of flaunching. Whether scaffold is needed moves the price more than the lead does, as the typical figures below show. Our chimney repairs page explains when a stack can be repaired and when it should be taken down and rebuilt, and when the stack comes off, remember that removing a chimney breast needs Building Regulations approval.

The council leaflet records that the village was extended east of Bramber Bridge during the 1950s. A railway through the parish opened in 1861 with a station near the castle, and it closed in 1966. Between those dates the village was a place people passed through and, later, a place they moved to. For a roofer the useful fact is the age: a 1950s house is now around seventy years old, and unless it has been re-roofed, its tiles, battens and underlay are all that old together.

3.1 Heavier tiles and flat-roofed extensions

Houses of that era often gained a flat-roofed extension or a garage later. Under Approved Document L, a fresh waterproof covering on a flat roof is treated as renovation, and where more than half of the roof element is renovated, its insulation has to be upgraded. Until 24 March 2027 that means Approved Document L 2021, Table 4.3: a roof worse than the 0.35 W/m²K threshold is brought up to an improved 0.16 W/m²K. The 2026 edition takes over on that date with the same values, in its Table 3.3. We explain how that applies to your extension and notify building control where the job requires it. A pitched roof is different: the Planning Portal says to check with building control before swapping to a covering that is 15 per cent heavier or more, and a structural check may follow.