Roofers in Selsey

Chichester District Council designated the Selsey Conservation Area on 21 July 1975, and its character appraisal, published in 2012, builds the whole picture around the High Street. The appraisal lists the roofing materials as thatch, slate and handmade clay tile. The walls beneath them are Mixen stone, sandstone and red brick, with beach flints bedded in mortar that has small stones pressed into the joints, a finish called galletting. Mixen stone is a local oddity: it was excavated from a reef offshore and used for boundary walls and a few historic buildings. The conservation area holds 41 listed buildings, every one of them grade II. That mix of old stone, uneven flint and hand-made tile is the reason a roof repair here is never quite the same as one on a modern estate. Each wall has its own movement and its own gaps, so the flashing along it must be cut for that wall alone, and the edge of the roof has to be dressed tidily against stone that was never laid to a straight line. Gutters fixed to such walls need brackets that bite into sound material, which means checking behind the fascia and not simply refitting the old fixings.

1.1 Slate, tingles and the older tile

Slate roofs fail in a particular way. The nails rust or the slate itself weakens, and a slate slides a few inches down the slope, leaving a gap that lets in rain. A tingle is a slim metal clip that pins a slate back without disturbing the courses above it, and it is often the neat answer for one or two loose slates. Where the whole slope is tired, the better route is stripping it, checking each slate and relaying with the good ones reused, which keeps the old character and the money in the roof, not in a skip. Handmade clay tiles are less uniform than machine-made ones, so replacements are chosen by eye for colour and thickness, and a patch of obviously different tile spoils the roofline. Our slate roofing page explains the repair-or-relay decision in more detail.

1.2 Listed houses and what needs consent

On a listed house, any work that changes what makes the building special needs listed building consent from the council. Plain maintenance that leaves the look and the materials alone is another matter, and reading the list entry comes before everything else, even before a ladder goes up. If you live inside the conservation area but your house is not listed, ask the council's planning team whether anything beyond the usual rules applies at your address. We put our findings in the written quote, together with photographs showing the roof in its present state. A cottage owner who knows the entry, the materials and the options before the first visit usually gets a tighter, more useful quote.

Selsey was once an island. The county history says it was joined to the mainland on the north by two fords, and that about half a mile has been washed away from the point since Domesday. The town now sits on Selsey Bill, bounded by the sea on the south and east, and that setting shapes a roof's working life more than any fashion in tile. East Street led to the fishermen's quarters and the lifeboat station, and a light railway ran here from 1897 until it closed in January 1935. Gales and rain driven sideways come in off the sea, and the roofs closest to the water meet them first. Roofs further in from the shore are sheltered by the buildings around them, but even those take a battering on a rough night, and a loose ridge cap or a lifted trim is easier to spot from the ground than it might seem.

3.1 Ridges, hips and verges in a gale

Along the apex of the roof runs the ridge, the sloping outer corners are hips, and the verge is the sloped edge where tiles stop beside a gable wall. A gale gets under these first. BS 5534 was revised in 2014, and under it mortar alone is not trusted to hold the caps on a ridge or hip; a screw or clip secures them too. A Selsey house with an old mortar-only ridge can often be improved by rebedding with fixings or by fitting a dry-fix system, which is the kind tested to BS 8612:2018, and it makes sense to look at the verge in the same visit. Our ridge tile repairs page walks through both options.

3.2 Flat roofs and gutters near the water

Flat extensions and garages catch the worst of the sea wind, and their edges are what lift. A repair can mean new trims and a reseal, while an older covering at the end of its life needs a new deck and membrane laid to a fall of at least 1:80 under BS 6229:2025. Gutters need clearing and refixing after a rough winter, and a sagging run is a modest job to put right before it starts to leak behind the fascia and soak the timber. Where an extension joins the main house, the junction deserves a close look, because the two structures move a little against each other and the seal between them is the first thing to open. A flat roof with a patch already on it is worth checking again each spring. See our flat roofing page for the coverings we lay.