Roofers in Hambledon, Surrey

Hambledon is a small parish of 2,721 acres, about four miles from Godalming. Its northern part lies on the Green Sand, while the clay in the south is thickly wooded, chiefly with oak, and the Victoria County History records brick-making carried on in that clay soil. A place built from its own ground has a particular look, and the brickwork of its walls, gables and chimney stacks gives a roof its setting. What any one house carries on its roof is not decided by the soil beneath it. We read the roof itself, and a house in a parish like this is as likely to have been re-covered as to have kept anything original.

1.1 Brick stacks and gable walls

Where a roof meets brickwork, the joint is the weak point. A flashing is the metal strip, often lead, that seals the edge of the tiles to a wall or a stack. It is dressed into a mortar joint, and when the pointing around it erodes, the flashing loosens and water finds a way in. The verge is the tiled edge running up a gable end, and its mortar bed weathers and cracks. Our chimney repairs page explains how a stack is repointed, re-flashed or rebuilt, and how the photographs decide which. Stacks on brick houses stand tall and exposed, and the flaunching on top, the mortar fillet that beds the pots, is one of the first parts to crack.

1.2 Matching an older roof when you repair it

If your house is old enough for the tiles to have weathered to a mellow colour, a few new ones will stand out. Reclaimed tiles of matching size and shade are the first choice where they can be found, and new ones are laid among the old so they blend over time and do not show as a patch. A batten is the thin timber strip a tile hooks over, and on an older roof the batten and its nail often give out before the tile does. That is how a roof can look sound from the lane and still shed tiles in a gale. The underside photographs tell you which kind of roof you have.

1.3 Building Regulations and a small job

Building control approval is not normally required where under 25 per cent of the total building envelope and under 50 per cent of the roof is changed, says the Planning Portal. Waverley Borough Council's building control team, or a registered building control approver, can confirm how that applies to a repair at your house. Our roof repairs page covers the smaller jobs that fall well inside those limits.

Hambledon has two conservation areas, known as Hambledon A and B, and the parish lies inside the Surrey Hills National Landscape, which carried the older designation Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty until the 2023 rename. Waverley Borough Council is the planning authority, and its planners are the people to ask about anything bigger than a straightforward repair in either area, because appearance carries more weight inside a conservation area than outside one.

3.1 Wooded ground and what it does to a roof

The southern clay is thickly wooded, and a roof under oak canopy has a different life from one in the open. Leaves gather in the angle where two slopes meet, which is called a valley, and in the gutters. Shade keeps tiles damp and moss follows. A gutter choked with leaves overflows onto the wall instead of draining through the downpipe, and damp at the eaves can reach the fascia, the board under the lowest tiles, and the rafter ends behind it. Our guttering, soffits and fascias page explains how those are replaced. Shade falls differently on every plot, so each house is judged on its own. A south-facing slope under open sky and a north-facing one beneath oaks can sit on the same house and age at very different speeds.