Roofers in Sheet

Sheet began as a linear village. The East Hampshire District Council leaflet for the Sheet Conservation Area, designated in 1976, describes the original settlement strung along Village Street, with two outlying mills beside the River Rother and its tributary the Ashford Stream. The street has houses and small cottages from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. For a roofer that mix is the whole story: a single run of buildings can hold three centuries of repairs, each done to the standards and with the materials of its day, and none of them identical to the house next door. Where cottages touch their neighbours, one house's flashing can end against another's wall, so we agree access with both owners before a ladder goes up. Cottages of different centuries also sit at different heights and pitches along the same street, which means valleys and abutments where one roof ends against another, and those junctions are where we spend the most time at survey.

1.1 Chimneys and abutments on old walls

Flashing is what stops rain running down the join between slope and masonry: sheet lead pushed into a slot cut in the brickwork and folded down over the covering. On tiled roofs the lead is often cut into soakers, small pieces that slide under each course alongside a wall, and where two slopes meet the channel between them is a valley gutter. Old walls are rarely straight and their joints rarely level, so every piece is shaped on site. Lead is sold by code. Code 4 is 1.80 mm thick and code 5 is 2.24 mm, and Royston Lead lists both for flashings. MyJobQuote reports that lead flashing can last for over 80 years, long enough to outlive more than one covering if it is fitted well. When a Village Street chimney leaks, the flashing and the joint it sits in are where we start.

1.2 Who decides inside the National Park

Sheet lies within the South Downs National Park. Planning applications for the village go to East Hampshire District Council, which processes them for the Park Authority, and building control stays with the same council. Before you change a roof, ask the council whether an Article 4 direction applies to your street. Roof windows have their own rules, set out in our guide to skylight planning permission.

The church of St Mary Magdalene was built in 1869 to a design by Arthur Blomfield, in local sandstone and malmstone with Bath stone dressings and a tall broach spire. A broach spire is an octagonal spire rising from a square tower, with small half-pyramids, the broaches, filling the four corners. It has been Grade II listed since 19 February 1973, and it is the landmark that tells you where the village centre is. We say nothing about its roof beyond what the record shows, but it makes a good picture of the challenge of working at height on an old building. On a tall roof access is the main cost, because the scaffold or platform has to reach every face before the first slate is touched.

3.1 Consent for the church and its neighbours

A Church of England church that still holds services goes through a faculty for repair work, not the council's listed building consent, and any change to the look of a place of worship is a planning question whichever denomination owns it. Another denomination follows its own route or, if the exemption does not apply, listed building consent. A listed house is dealt with differently. The Park Authority's own advice is that ordinary upkeep and minor repairs using matching material need no listed building consent, whereas alterations that change the building's character do.

3.2 Water, ground and the mills

Beside the Rother and the Ashford Stream the sensible first look is at drainage. A downpipe that discharges against a wall or into a blocked gully soaks the base of the building, and an overflowing gutter streaks the wall below it. Clearing and refixing guttering is quick work, and our roof repairs page shows what a repair visit covers. Scaffolding that stands on the road needs a licence from Hampshire County Council, arranged by the scaffolder: the fee is £211.90 for the first two weeks, and ten clear working days should be allowed for the application. Bats and nesting birds can use towers, spires and mill roofs, so if a survey finds a roost or a nest, the work waits. The same applies to any older outbuilding on a village plot, where a quiet roof space is just as attractive to a roosting bat as a church tower is. Once the survey is done you receive photographs of every fault we found, a plain verdict on each one, and a written quote that gives one total.