Roofers in Donnington

Donnington is a village on the coastal plain just south of Chichester, and its old core is protected as the Donnington Conservation Area. Chichester District Council designated it in June 1976 around part of Selsey Road and Pelleys Lane. The council's 2012 character appraisal names the roof coverings as thatch, clay tiles and some slate. That is a short list, yet each material asks something different of the person who climbs up to mend it. A roof here is rarely a stand-alone job. It usually meets a neighbour's wall, a shared gutter or an older chimney, and the repair has to suit both sides of the junction.

1.1 Thatch beside tile

The oldest house in the conservation area is Taylor's Cottage, a 16th-century timber-framed building with brick infilling and a thatched roof. Thatch is a separate trade, so that work goes to a thatcher. What we do for a street like this is the work around it: lead flashing (sheet metal turned into a wall and over the roof edge to shed water), the chimneys that rise through the thatch line, and the clay-tiled and slated roofs next door. A tiled roof that butts up to thatch needs its edge details finished neatly so that rain is carried away from the older roof and not into it. Before anything comes off, we photograph the junction, so you can see how the two roofs meet before we touch it. If a leak turns out to start on the thatch side, we tell you plainly and suggest you speak to a thatcher.

1.2 Clay tile and slate inside the boundary

Clay tiles are the covering to match for many repairs here, and a tile that has slipped or cracked can be swapped singly while the sound tiles around it stay put. Slate is treated the same way. A slipped slate is held with a tingle, a slim strip of metal that clips it in place without disturbing the row above. If the nails along a whole slope have rusted through, relaying the slope and reusing the good slates is a better fix than a patch that will fail again after the next storm. Eight listed buildings stand inside the boundary, and works that would affect a listed building's character need listed building consent. That is why we look up the list entry and put the question to Chichester District Council's planning team before we price anything that changes how the roof looks. Our pitched roofing page covers how slopes are taken off and put back.

St George's Church was rebuilt in the 13th century and given a 16th-century tower, and a fire in 1939 seriously damaged its nave and aisles. A church roof is a consent question before it is a roofing one. A Church of England church that remains in worship use is exempt from listed building consent, and its works go through the faculty system. Planning permission can still be needed for changes to the outside. The parish gets that approval first, and we price and programme the roof work once it is in hand. Access matters too. When a scaffold has to stand on the public highway, the scaffold contractor asks West Sussex County Council for the licence, and the council wants at least 10 working days' notice.

3.1 Low ground, canal water and the gutters

The Chichester Canal runs through Donnington, and the appraisal records it as being restored when it was written. On flat ground close to water, the roof has to get rain away from the house quickly, because nothing in the landscape will do it for you. A gutter that sags or has a blocked outlet overflows down the wall, and that wets the brick or render beneath it. Manufacturer guidance puts the fall on a gutter run at roughly 1:600 to 1:350 depending on the system, which is a slope too gentle to see from the ground. We check the fall, the joints and the outlets together, and look at the fascia board behind, since a gutter that has overflowed for a season can leave the timber soft. Our guttering, soffits and fascias page describes the replacement options.

3.2 Open ground and gales

With so little to slow a gale on the plain, the first places we look after a blow are the ridge, the verges and the lower courses at the eaves. Our verdict arrives before any price: whether the roof wants refixing, repairing or replacing, shown in photographs of your own roof, then comes the written quote, which gives one price in total. A house that has lost only a handful of tiles does not need a new roof, and we say as much. Where the covering is tired across the whole slope, we tell you that too, and show you the evidence. Either way, you are left with a tidy site and the old materials carted off.