Roofers in Cocking

Cocking had a church by 1086, and the building standing today is listed Grade I. The Victoria County History describes it as flint with ashlar dressings (the cut stone at corners and openings), with Henley sandstone for the dressings, and tile on every roof except the tower's. The tower is built of local malm rock and plastered, and it is covered in stone slates. One building therefore shows flint, sandstone, tile and stone slate within a few metres, which is a useful reminder that two roofs a hundred yards apart in this village can need quite different repairs. We never price from the street. We go up, photograph what we find, and say what the roof needs. The same care applies to the cottages and farm buildings around the churchyard, where the aim is to match what is there, not to modernise it.

1.1 Where tile meets flint

A flint wall is rubble set in mortar, and it weathers and moves differently from a tiled slope. The weak point is the line where the two meet. At a gable or beside a chimney, rain runs down the face of the wall and into the junction, so the roof needs a lead flashing: a strip let into the wall and bent down across the tile edges. On flint that strip goes into a raked-out mortar joint and is pointed over, rather than being glued on with sealant that peels within a few winters. When a stain appears on a bedroom ceiling next to such a wall, the lead is among the first places we look, and the fix is often a repair rather than a new roof. Our lead roofing and leadwork page sets out the lead codes and what each is used for.

1.2 Stone slates and the timbers beneath

Stone slates are cut from natural stone and hung on pegs or nails from battens (the narrow timber laths that carry the covering). They are heavy, and a slipped one is replaced with a matching slate, not a lighter lookalike. Changing to a very different covering is a bigger decision. The Planning Portal puts the line at a new covering 15 per cent heavier or more than the old one, where building control gets involved, so a structural check comes before any switch. A parish church in use under the Church of England is outside listed building consent and follows the faculty route instead, though that exemption does not remove the need for planning permission for work that alters how the exterior looks. For a private house that is listed, the list entry comes first and the quote second.

Cocking is inside the South Downs National Park, and the village has a conservation area on the Park Authority's Chichester district maps. Both facts change who you talk to before a roof job, though neither one stops ordinary repairs. Most of what we do here is routine: refixing tiles, renewing lead, cleaning out gutters, mending a ridge. The planning side only becomes important when a job changes how the building looks or when the building is listed.

3.1 Who decides in Cocking

The National Park Authority is the planning authority for the Park, but in the Chichester part it has handed day-to-day applications to Chichester District Council, which handles them on its behalf. Building control stays with Chichester District Council as well. Putting back the same covering normally falls outside the definition of development, since the building looks no different afterwards, with caveats for listed buildings and for any Article 4 direction. The Authority's Article 4 page lists none for Cocking. Rules change, so put your question to the council's planning team before altering a roof, and do it early if the house is old or you plan a different material.

3.2 The Manor House and other old frames

The Manor House, north-west of the churchyard, is of medieval origin, probably 15th-century, and a house of that age carries several centuries of repairs. According to the Park Authority, routine maintenance and small in-place repairs that match what is already there need no listed building consent, while works that would alter a listed building's character do. We read the list entry before we quote anything beyond a repair, and we tell you in the written quote which of the two your job is. In an old house the roof timbers, the wall plates (the beams along the tops of the walls) and any lime mortar are part of the building's fabric, and a modern membrane or a heavy tile can upset them.