Roofers in Hunston

Hunston is farming country with no village centre, which the county history sums up as good wheat-growing land, and its landmark is not a green or a high street but the Manor House. It dates from about 1660 to 1680, stood within a rectangular moat, and has walls of Mixon rock rubble with freestone ashlar and brick angles. The council's appraisal adds that the house uses red bricks and red handmade clay tiles, and it is listed Grade II*. A roof of handmade tile is a different animal from a machine-made one: the tiles vary in shade and camber, which gives the roof its texture, and a flat modern replacement beside them stands out. Colour is only part of it. Handmade tiles are often thicker and less regular, so the battens and the nailing need to suit the tile, not the other way round. We check the spacing before any tile goes back, because a roof laid to the wrong gauge never sits quite right and lets water in at the laps.

1.1 Matching handmade tile

When a handmade tile cracks, the sensible replacement is another old one. Reclaimed tiles of the right size and colour are the usual choice, taken from a roof being taken down or from a salvage supplier, and they are worth waiting for. A sound roof of this kind rarely needs stripping. On an old house it also pays to keep gutters and downpipes clear and carrying water well away from the walls. We refix what has slipped, replace what has cracked, and tell you when the battens beneath (the softwood laths the tiles hook over) are spent. Our pitched roofing page explains how a clay-tiled slope is stripped and relaid when it does come to that.

1.2 Consent before you touch a listed roof

Section 7 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 requires listed building consent before a listed building is altered in a way that changes what makes it special. A repair in matching materials is a separate matter, and Chichester District Council is the one to ask where the line falls in your case. We study the list entry, photograph the roof as it stands, and write down exactly what we propose, so the council has something concrete to answer. A vague description invites a vague reply, and a roof left leaking while you wait gets worse. Where a make-safe is needed in the meantime, a temporary covering keeps the weather out without altering the historic fabric, and the permanent repair follows once the council has replied.

The parish church of St Leodegar was wholly rebuilt in 1885, and the council appraisal names A. W. Blomfield as its architect. In a parish where the manor house dates from the 17th century, a Victorian church is the young building. St Leodegar belongs to the Church of England, whose churches in use sit outside listed building consent and under the church's own faculty system, so its roof is a matter for the parish rather than for a householder. The practical lesson for a house nearby is simpler: roofs built in different decades age in different ways, and the survey has to read each one on its own terms. A Victorian covering, an interwar one and a modern one each fail at different places, and we look for the places that suit the period.

3.1 Outbuildings with fragile sheet

Hunston has no village centre, so houses sit scattered among fields, and the appraisal notes large numbers of commercial nurseries around North and South Mundham on the London clay and brick earth near Hunston. Where a house has sheds, stores or lean-tos behind it, those roofs can be older and lighter than the house roof, and some are cement sheet. The HSE's guidance warns that cement-sheet roofs are always fragile, and advises treating any building put up or refurbished before 2000 as likely to contain asbestos. Never climb on a corrugated cement roof or on rooflights set into one. Weathered asbestos cement handled carefully and removed unbroken is non-licensed work, while sheet that is substantially broken up is notifiable non-licensed work. We assess such a roof from a ladder and from below. Our garage roof replacement page covers the coverings that replace it.

3.2 Bats, barns and roof voids

Old barns and roof voids are exactly where bats roost. Legal protection covers bats and their roosts, and a re-roof can disturb them. If you find droppings in a loft, or see bats leaving at dusk, stop and tell us before any work starts, and we will pause the job until the right advice has been taken. Nesting birds are protected too, so a job is better held over an active nest than torn through it. If the roof is a flat one on a garage or store, that applies to the felt edges and gutters as well, where birds like to build.