Roofers in Henfield

Walk Henfield's older streets and the roof shapes keep repeating. Horsham District Council's conservation area appraisal records that many roofs of older buildings in the village are hipped or half-hipped, and that peg tiles are what usually cover them. A hip is where a roof turns a corner, so the slope runs diagonally down from the ridge to the eaves instead of ending at a gable wall. A half-hip stops partway, leaving the gable to carry on up under a little sloping cap. Either way you get extra sloping seams, and every seam is a place where one run of tiles has to meet another. The village lies chiefly on the east bank of the River Adur, and the church stands on a ridge of Lower Greensand above the Weald clay.

1.1 What a peg tile roof asks of a roofer

Peg tiles are small clay plain tiles, traditionally hung from the battens (thin timber laths that every course of tiles hooks over) by a wooden peg through a hole near the head. Laid well, they overlap in rows so that the whole slope sheds rain although each tile is small. They also move with age. Pegs and nibs snap, battens go soft where the laps trap damp, and a slipped tile on a hipped slope often has neighbours that are about to follow. Marley cites 60 years as the minimum life of a clay tile, but a conservation writer warns that the figure cannot be trusted on ancient peg-tile roofs. Age alone tells you little. The condition of each tile, the battens and the underlay (the sheet beneath the tiles) tells you the rest.

1.2 Photographs first, then a verdict

On a hipped roof we photograph the slope tile by tile and attach the pictures when the quote goes out, so you can see the cracked, the slipped and the sound for yourself. If the fixings are healthy and the damage is local, a repair holds. If the battens have rotted along a run of eaves, relaying that stretch is the sounder job. Our pitched roofing page sets out how a stripped and relaid slope is built back up.

1.3 Hip tiles and their fixings

The tiles that cap each diagonal are usually where the first failure shows. A hip tile bedded only in mortar has often lost its joints to frost and shrinkage by now. Under BS 5534 as revised in 2014 a bed of mortar no longer does that job alone, and new work is clipped or screwed through to a hip iron at the foot. The code itself adds that some old roofs, especially those with reclaimed materials, may not suit every recommendation, so each hip is judged on its own.

Henfield's oldest roofs rest on frames that predate every modern standard. The Victoria County History describes Apple Tree Cottage as a single-aisled hall house possibly of the 14th century and the George inn as a late 16th-century building. The parish church of St Peter, built partly of local sandstone and partly of flint with Caen stone dressings, was restored and largely rebuilt in 1870 and 1871. A roof on timber of that age has bowed and settled over centuries, and the covering follows the frame instead of a spirit level. Forcing it straight would only open the laps. We lay tiles and slabs to the shape that is there and keep every overlap tight.

3.1 Who to ask inside the 1973 boundary

Henfield Conservation Area was designated in 1973, and the council has published an appraisal and a management plan for it. Swapping a covering for the same material in the same style seldom needs planning permission, yet a listed house needs listed building consent whenever the works would touch what makes it special, and a conservation area adds its own questions. Henfield sits under Horsham District Council and outside the South Downs National Park, so the district's planning team is the office to ring. St Peter's, as a parish church in use for worship, follows the Church of England's faculty route in place of that consent. If a roof window is on your mind, read our guide to skylight planning permission before you choose a position.

3.2 Scaffolding on narrow village frontages

Where a plot gives little room to work, the scaffold may stand on or beside the road. A scaffold that obstructs a highway needs a licence under section 169 of the Highways Act 1980, and the highway authority issues it. West Sussex County Council wants at least 10 working days between application and erection, and lists a month of scaffolding at £266. That wait is the reason we visit and plan access early, long before a start date is promised. Where a roof has a lead valley or a stack on a shared wall, we like the platform up before we open anything.

3.3 The railway that came and went

The Horsham to Shoreham line opened in 1861 with a station west of the village and closed in 1966. The 19th-century buildings that the appraisal finds roofed in slate belong to the same century. A slate roof laid then is now well over a hundred years old, and the repair question is usually whether the sound slates can be saved or the whole slope has reached the end.