Roofers in South Harting

The parish church of St Mary stands at South Harting under the Downs, and it is the clearest record of how local buildings go together. The walls are local sandstone ashlar (cut and squared blocks) and flint rubble (rough flints set in mortar). The roof is tile. The south face of the tower is tile-hung, and the spire is sheeted with copper. Three different coverings meet in one building, and every covering ages at its own pace. Houses that borrow part of that palette also borrow some of those weak spots, which is why a roof inspection in a village like this begins at the joints and edges, not out in the middle of a slope. A junction is where we expect to find the fault first.

1.1 Where clay tile meets old masonry

A clay tile covering ages slowly. The details around it age faster. Lead flashing is the folded sheet that keeps water out wherever a slope butts a wall or a chimney stack, and it is let into the joints of the masonry. When the mortar behind it crumbles, the lead lifts at the edge and rain finds the gap. Flint joints run uneven, so each flashing has to be dressed to follow the wall instead of a ruled line, and the pointing and the lead belong in one visit rather than two. Our lead roofing and leadwork page shows how we form flashings, soakers (the small folded pieces that tuck under each tile beside a wall) and valleys (the channel where two slopes meet). Doing that work neatly keeps a junction dry for years to come.

1.2 Tile-hanging below the roof line

Tile-hanging is small tiles hung in overlapping rows on battens (thin timber laths) fixed to a wall. It is the surface on the church tower, and it complicates a roof junction, because the roof covering, the hung tiles and the lead must all lap in the right order so that water always runs outwards. A cracked hung tile looks minor from the road. Behind it, damp can reach the timber of the wall for a long time before any stain appears indoors. Our guide to tile-hanging repairs explains how a failed area is stripped back and rehung, and when single tiles can be swapped instead, which is the cheaper route whenever the battens behind are sound.

South Harting lies inside the South Downs National Park, and that changes who you ask before you alter a roof. Putting back the same covering generally sits outside planning control, since the house looks unchanged once the work is done. Listed buildings and any Article 4 direction are the exceptions, and a new covering that looks different may be treated as a change. Planning applications here are handled by Chichester District Council on the National Park Authority's behalf, so check with the council's planning team before you assume. The same goes for a roof window, since the National Park limits what is allowed. Tell us if you are thinking of one, and we will steer you to the correct guidance well before any window is ordered, because a wrong guess there is expensive to undo.

3.1 Listing, the church and the war memorial

As a parish church still used for worship, St Mary's answers to the Church of England's faculty system rather than to listed building consent, although a change to its exterior can still be a planning matter. Harting War Memorial gained its Grade II* listing on 11 October 2016, a sign that the list keeps growing. For a listed house, anything altering its character calls for listed building consent, whereas ordinary upkeep and like-for-like patching does not. We open the list entry before pricing any larger work and note what it records about the roof, so nobody is surprised halfway through a job. A listed roof often has its own history of patching, and knowing where earlier repairs were made tells us where the next problem is likely to appear.

3.2 The village conservation area and Building Regulations

South Harting has its own conservation area, separate from those of East Harting and West Harting, so check which map your house sits on. For the roof itself, Building Regulations enter the picture when a job is large. Building control approval is normally unnecessary while under 25 per cent of the building envelope and under 50 per cent of the roof is involved. A heavier new covering, 15 per cent or more, brings building control and a structural check. Inside the Park, building control remains with the district council. After the survey we tell you which of these limits your job comes near, and where the work does need notifying we deal with that for you, so the paperwork never holds up the start date or the finish.