Roofers in Graffham

Graffham church stands at the foot of the Downs, below Graffham Down, with the village strung along the road that slopes down from it to the north. That layout shapes a roofer's day. You approach from below, you climb past gardens and garden walls, and from the top of a ladder the church is usually the thing you can see. St Giles' has flint rubble walls, trimmed at corners and openings with ashlar, which is neatly cut stone, under a roof of tile. It is listed Grade II, and the list entry number is 1276882. Work on a listed church does not follow the same road as work on a house, so the first question on any roof near it is who gives consent. The same habit applies to every job we survey in the village: we find out what protections sit on the building before we work out what the roof needs, because it saves you from paying for advice twice.

1.1 Who gives consent for a listed church roof

St Giles is a Church of England church. For as long as services are held there, the ecclesiastical exemption keeps it outside council listed building consent, and the faculty route, the church's own system, applies instead. A church that closes, or one belonging to a denomination outside the exemption, falls under the ordinary rules. Houses and cottages around the church answer to the council instead. Graffham sits where the district council handles planning applications for the National Park Authority, and building control stays with the district council. If you are unsure whether your cottage is listed, the National Heritage List for England is searchable by address, and a planning officer can confirm the boundary of the conservation area. We look up the entry first, because an unexpected listing can stop a job after the scaffold is already up.

1.2 Working on a hillside village

A sloping road changes the practical side of re-roofing. Skips, scaffold bases and deliveries all have to be planned against the fall of the ground, and neighbours need to know when a lorry is coming. We talk the programme through with you beforehand, including where tiles will be stacked, how the ladders reach the eaves and when the road might be briefly narrowed. When scaffold obstructs the road, West Sussex County Council must license it. The scaffolder files for it, and the council asks for a minimum of 10 working days' notice. Our roof repairs page explains how a smaller job runs from first visit to cleared site.

The walls of Graffham are flint, white stone and brick, with tile roofs that have replaced thatch in places. Flint is hard and irregular, so a roof that meets a flint wall needs flashings cut to follow the wall's line, and the joint is where leaks tend to start. A flashing is the strip of metal that bridges roof and wall. On an old wall, the mortar joints are rarely level, so the chase for the lead is cut to follow the courses of the flint, and the work is slow and careful. Lead is the traditional metal, dressed over the tiles at one edge and tucked into a raked-out mortar joint at the other. Code 4 lead is listed by Royston Lead for flashings and soakers, and code 5 for flashings and larger gutters. Brick dressings around windows and corners add more edges to seal, which is why an old cottage in the village can have more flashing than its size suggests. Each of those edges should be checked in the same visit, since a leak that is fixed at the stack but missed at the window head will return with the next heavy rain.

3.1 Chimney stacks and the joints around them

Every stack on a tiled roof has a flashing at its foot and lead stepping up its sides. When the lead lifts or the pointing crumbles, rain gets into the brickwork and travels down. A brown mark spreading across the chimney breast is the usual warning. Repointing, a new flaunching (the mortar bed that seats each chimney pot) and fresh lead are separate parts of one job, and a survey shows which parts are needed. A stack that leans, or pots that rock when touched, is a different matter, and we say at once if a stack needs taking down and rebuilding to its original height with the same bricks. Our chimney repairs page explains the steps in detail, and our lead roofing and leadwork page covers the metalwork.

3.2 What the Article 4 entry means

The National Park Authority lists two Article 4 directions for The Dower House, Graffham, made on 5 May 1985 and confirmed on 4 October 1985. They apply to that property, not to the village as a whole, and they tell you nothing about other houses. For any other Graffham house, ask the planning team about the conservation area and any listing before you change how a roof looks. If you would like roof windows, a different covering or a rebuilt stack, put the plan in writing to them first and keep the reply with the job file. You receive the price in writing after the survey, as one total.