Roofers in Partridge Green

Partridge Green takes its name from the green itself, a strip of waste land beside which houses began to appear by the 18th century. By about 1840 the road junction had about six buildings. Then the Horsham to Shoreham railway opened through the parish in 1861, with a station at Partridge Green, and the village changed pace. The green was inclosed in 1872, and by 1909 building ran along most of the High Street. The line closed in 1966, though the High Street it helped to fill is still the spine of the village, with roofs from many different decades along it.

1.1 Ageing roofs on a long street frontage

A street that filled in over a few decades never has a single roof history. One owner kept the original covering, the neighbour re-roofed in a different decade, and the house beyond had its chimney rebuilt after a gale. Where two houses share a party wall, which is simply the wall standing between them, a leak in one roof can turn up as a damp patch in the other house. The top of that wall is where a metal skirt of lead, called flashing, closes the gap between brickwork and slope. Lead earns its place there because it can be beaten into the exact shape of the joint and left to move a little with the weather. Our lead roofing and leadwork page sets out the lead codes, which are thicknesses, and which one suits which junction.

1.2 Valleys, gutters and the route the rain takes

On a long frontage, whatever channels water is among the first things we inspect. Where two slopes run together at an inward corner, that corner is a valley, and its lining carries the run-off from both sides. A shared gutter, or a hidden box gutter running between two roofs, does the same work in miniature. Leaf litter and a slight sag are enough to make either one spill behind a wall, and by the time a brown ring spreads across a bedroom ceiling the water has usually been finding its way in for some while. So we photograph the valley and the gutter run before giving a verdict, and we recommend the smallest repair that will hold: a re-lined valley, a freed outlet, a handful of refixed tiles. A full strip and relay arises only when the battens, which are the small timber strips every course of tiles hangs from, and the underlay beneath have both given out. Our written quote after the survey gives a single total price for whichever job it turns out to be.

North of the High Street, the village filled with houses and bungalows through the middle of the 20th century. A bungalow roof from those years may be hipped, sloping down on all four sides, or gabled, and it often has a flat-roofed porch, garage or rear extension attached. Whichever it is, it has carried the weather for decades by now, and its age shows first in places you cannot see from the garden: the nails, the battens and the felt beneath the tiles.

3.1 Ridges, hips and verges at this age

Three edges give plenty of trouble on a roof like this. The ridge caps the very top. Hips are the angled spines on a roof that slopes away on every side. The verge is the tiled margin beside a gable wall. Many roofs of that era had all three bedded on a strip of mortar and nothing else. In the 2014 edition of BS 5534 a mortar bed alone no longer counted as a fixing for ridge or hip tiles, so each tile is now held by a clip or screw, or by a dry-fix system, as well. A cracked bed is a routine repair, and bringing it up to that standard is part of a square finish, not an extra. Where patching has stopped paying, our pitched roofing page shows how a whole slope comes off, gets new battens and is relaid. Some owners find the mortar crumbled at the hips while the main slope is still good, and that is exactly the case for renewing the edges and leaving the rest alone.

3.2 Flat-roofed porches, garages and extensions

The flat sections tend to be the first part of a bungalow to let go. BS 6229:2025 sets a minimum finished fall of 1:80, and roofers lay to a steeper design, around 1:40, so water keeps running off after the timbers have moved and settled. Puddles that sit for days mean the fall has gone. If the deck beneath is sound, a new membrane can go over it, either EPDM, which is a synthetic rubber sheet, or GRP, a glass-reinforced plastic laid wet; if the deck has gone soft, it is stripped and replaced first. The HSE advises treating anything built or done up before 2000 as though it contains asbestos until a test says otherwise, so an old garage roof of fibre-cement sheet is looked at carefully before anything is drilled, cut or lifted. Breaking that sheet releases dust, which is why careful, whole-sheet handling matters, and why the subject comes up when we survey, well before work starts.