Roofers in Horsham

Horsham sits at the River Arun crossing in the Weald, on Upper Tunbridge Wells Sand, and the stone quarried close to the town gave its name to a roofing material. The Horsham District Council conservation area appraisal says that Horsham Stone found near the town was the source of Horsham Stone roofing, and calls those roofs a distinctive traditional feature of the locality. The parish church of St Mary is built of local sandstone and has a Horsham Stone roof and a shingled spire, while its large tower survives from the Norman period. The town was called a borough in 1235 and may have been a planned new town founded by the Braose family around a market place. Old roofs in a centre of that age may have been patched more than once, and the patches do not always match.

1.1 Hipped and half-hipped stone roofs

The appraisal records that a number of hipped and half-hipped Horsham Stone roofs remain in the town centre conservation area. Hips are the sloping lines at the corners of a roof; a half-hip is clipped short, leaving a small gable at the top. Stone slabs are laid in diminishing courses, which means the courses get smaller as they climb. That pattern is part of the look, and it is why a stone roof is repaired by someone who knows how it goes together rather than by anyone with a ladder. We carry out Horsham Stone repairs and re-roofs; our Horsham Stone roofing page explains the work in detail.

1.2 What a stone roof asks of its owner

The weak points on a stone roof are the same as on any other: the hips, the valleys where two slopes meet, and the flashings at chimneys and abutments. When a stone slab slips, it is usually because the peg or nail that held it has failed, not because the slab itself has. Slabs are salvaged and reused wherever they are sound, since new stone is hard to match for colour and texture. Our survey records each fault in photographs, and you get a plain call on whether a repair, a partial relay or a full strip is needed. One total price, in writing, comes after the survey.

The slabs themselves decide how far a relay can go. Sound ones are set aside as the slope is stripped, cracked ones are rejected, and the roof can only be relaid from what is good, topped up where necessary. Where stone meets a chimney or a gable wall, lead flashings and soakers do the sealing, worked into the courses so the pattern of the roof is not broken. Those are the details that make a repair look as if it was always there.

St Mary's is an Anglican parish church. While it stays in use, the ecclesiastical exemption applies, so its repairs follow the church's own faculty system rather than a listed building consent application, although development that changes the exterior still needs planning permission. The houses around it follow the ordinary listed building rules.

When the railway arrived in 1848, Horsham started to grow along its line. The appraisal records Victorian terraces and planned estates that expanded the town in that direction. A terraced roof of that era is a series of long shared slopes and party walls, and a leak at one house can run along the roof timbers into the next. So the survey takes in more than the one house. We look at the gutters, the chimney flashings, the party wall upstands and the valley gutters between rear extensions, and photograph each in place so you can see them yourself.

3.1 Party walls and shared roofs

On a terrace, the line where one house's roof meets the next is a shared structure. A cracked flashing or a slipped slate at that junction is usually your problem and your neighbour's at the same time. Chimney breasts on a party wall are covered by Building Regulations, and removing one on a party wall also calls for a party wall notice. We explain what each job involves before starting, and tell you when it is worth speaking to the neighbours first.

3.2 Valleys, soakers and old slates

A valley, the inside corner where two slopes run together, collects the runoff of both and so carries more water than any other part of the roof. Where a Victorian roof turns a corner, the lead or the tile arrangement in the valley has to be sound. Soakers are small lead sheets tucked in beside each course where the roof butts a wall or stack. When those wear through, damp shows up in the corner of an upstairs room long before anything is visible outside. Our roof repairs page sets out how we trace and cure these leaks without stripping more than we need to.

Gutters deserve a mention on a terrace too. A shared run of gutter and a downpipe that serves two houses can overflow onto the wall below and cause damp that looks like a roof leak. Checking the outlets and the joints is a quick job, and it sometimes means the roof itself is not the problem at all, which is a result worth having.