Roofers in Buriton

East Hampshire District Council's leaflet for the Buriton Conservation Area, which was designated in 1968 and extended in December 1976, describes a village at the foot of the South Downs with the hills as a dramatic backdrop. Most of its buildings are small cottages of brick or stone, standing directly on the street. That layout shapes the roofing work more than any material does. There is no drive to park a lorry on, no front garden to stack tiles in, and often a neighbour's wall touching the end of the roof. A job here starts with a conversation about access, not a conversation about slates, and we would rather have that conversation at the kitchen table than half way up a ladder.

1.1 Eaves, gutters and the pavement

When the eaves overhang the footway, a gutter or fascia repair is a highway matter as well as a roofing one. Scaffolding set up over the footway or in the road falls under the Highways Act, and a licence has to be in place first. Hampshire County Council wants the application in ten clear working days before the start date, charges £211.90 for the first two weeks and £72 for each further fortnight, and does not extend. That wait goes into our programme from day one, so the date you are given is one the scaffold can actually meet. For small gutter jobs a tower or a cherry picker from the road may do instead, and we say which at survey. Our guttering, soffit and fascia page explains the soffit, the underside of the overhang, and the fascia board that carries the gutter.

1.2 A village that grew slowly

The Portsmouth to London railway was built through the parish in 1859, but no station was built, so Buriton did not expand as rapidly as other places along the line. A village that grows slowly keeps its older buildings, and many roofs here will have been patched in several different decades. We find the earlier repairs easy to spot from the loft: a mismatched batten, a section of newer underlay, a tile of a different colour. They tell us how the roof has been treated and where water has found its way in before, which matters because a roof that has leaked once at a given spot usually does so again until the cause is fixed rather than covered over.

The Manor House is a brick building of the 18th century with an older, timber-framed rear part dating from the 16th and 17th centuries. The manor was bought in 1719 by Edward Gibbon, grandfather of the historian, and the house has been listed Grade II* since 16 March 1954. Two construction methods and two periods share one roof line, which is the kind of building where a straightforward answer takes the most care to give.

3.1 Where an 18th century roof meets a 16th century one

The join between the two parts is where we expect trouble first. Valleys, abutments and the lead dressed into them take the strain where one roof meets another, and if water gets in there it runs into old timber that is hard to replace, so the junction is the first place we put the camera. The roof pitch matters too. Natural slate needs at least 20 degrees according to BS 5534, and the tiles used on each part of a house may differ from the other. Matching what is there is the principle, and where a tile or slate cannot be matched exactly we show you the nearest options before anything is ordered.

3.2 A listed roof and its weight

Anything that changes what makes a listed building special needs listed building consent first. A new covering that is heavier than the old one also brings in building control, because the Planning Portal says to check wherever the weight of the roof covering rises by 15 per cent or more. An older frame may not carry extra load happily, so a structural check comes first. The National Park Authority treats routine upkeep and small repairs in matching material more lightly, but the line between a repair and a change is for the council to draw, and we ask before we assume. Bats also use old roof spaces, and a house of the Manor House's age is the kind of building where a survey may find a roost; if it does, the work waits for the right conditions and the right advice.

3.3 Chimneys on an old house

Stacks on a house of the Manor House's age show why national guides treat chimney lead as a job of its own. MyJobQuote prices lead flashing for a full chimney at around £350 to £460 without scaffold and £700 to £920 with it, and a small patch repair at £150 to £250. Those are national guide figures from a page last updated on 22 September 2026, not a price for any one house; our written quote follows the survey and names one total.