Roofers in Headley

Headley's conservation area is built around two clusters of old buildings. One gathers at the crossroads where the High Street meets Mill Lane. The other forms around the church. East Hampshire handles planning here, and Headley lies outside the National Park, so the council itself decides applications. For a roofer, a village with a tight historic core means the rules vary from house to house, and the first thing to settle is where your address sits. Where a roof is bound up with a neighbour's, through a shared wall, a stack or a gutter running along two properties, work on one affects the other, so a good survey looks at the junctions on both sides, and a courteous word with the neighbour before the scaffold goes up saves awkward moments later.

1.1 Inside the boundary or just outside it

Inside a conservation area the covering, the chimneys and the roof edges all contribute to how the village looks from the street, and that is why the council cares what goes on them. A house just beyond the line has more freedom. The only way to be sure is to check the council's conservation map against your address, and it is quick to do. Where the answer is not obvious, a short email to East Hampshire's planning team gets it in writing, and that email is worth keeping with the quote.

1.2 Repairs that blend in

In the old core, the aim of a repair is that nobody can tell it was done. We match tiles by size, colour and weathering as closely as supply allows, and where a stack has lost its flashing we renew the lead in the same style as the old. On stone and old brick, the pointing that seals a new flashing is matched to the existing mortar in colour and texture, and the joint is raked out by hand, so the repair does not stand out from the lane and the wall face is not chipped. Our chimney repairs page shows what rebuilding, repointing and re-flashing a stack involves. The Article 4 direction East Hampshire made on 31 January 2018 deals with converting employment buildings to homes, and no roof right is lost under it. Inside the village, the rules that count for a roof are therefore the conservation area, any listing, and the ordinary position that putting back what was there is not normally development. Each of those is a question for the council, and each is easier to answer with the survey photographs in hand.

Suters stands set back near the Mill Lane junction, and East Hampshire's leaflet describes it as a Hampshire Wealden house. It is listed Grade II*, one of the higher grades of listing, and it was first listed on 15 August 1985 under list entry number 1093985. A house of that rank is a different job from an ordinary roof. Under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990, an alteration touching the special interest of a listed building needs listed building consent. That can include a change of covering, and it may reach well beyond it. A timber-framed house of this type also has its own roof structure to respect, with old frames that are rarely true, so the new covering follows the building, never the other way round. Hand-made tiles or natural slate, where the existing roof has them, are matched rather than swapped for something cheaper that looks about right from the lane.

3.1 Starting a listed roof job with the entry

On a listed house here, the order of work does not change. First comes the list entry. Next come photographs of the roof from the ground and from above. Then the council's conservation officer is asked whether the job counts as repair or alteration, because that is where the consent line falls. Like-for-like maintenance is often a matter of judgement, and it is the council that judges. Because the process takes time, we recommend contacting them early, ahead of a booking for scaffold or materials, so the programme is not built around a date that cannot be kept.

3.2 High ground, open sky and fixings

The Victoria County History of 1908 notes that the high ground of the parish commands views to Hindhead, the Devil's Punch Bowl and the Devil's Jumps. A site with views is a site with weather. Roofs on high ground take more wind than those in a hollow, and fixings are specified for the site: tile makers such as Wienerberger put altitude, geographic location and how exposed the spot is to wind among the factors behind any fixing specification. Ridge and verge fixings are the first place we look, and the pitch of the roof comes next, because a shallow slope facing the wind can be pulled upwards by suction, as Marley's guidance on weather resistance points out. A ridge that has been loose for a winter or two is often the sign that a repair is due, and the sensible moment to deal with it is before the first gale of autumn finds it. Our pitched roofing page describes how we approach a full re-cover when an exposed slope has run out of life.