Roofers in Steyning

Steyning is a designated conservation area, and Horsham District Council's appraisal and management plan counts 109 listed buildings inside it, six of them Grade II* and two Grade I. On a street with that many protected roofs, any repair is judged against its neighbours. The appraisal says older buildings in the town are typically roofed with Horsham slabs or clay peg tiles, often on hipped roofs, and that slate is generally confined to buildings of the nineteenth century. Those three coverings call for three different sets of skills, three different ways of fixing, and three different ideas of what a matching repair means, and a roofer who is good at one is not automatically good at the others.

1.1 Horsham slabs and diminishing courses

Horsham slabs are thick slabs of local sandstone. They go on in diminishing courses, meaning the biggest and heaviest slabs start at the eaves, and every course higher up is cut a little smaller as the roof climbs towards the ridge. Stone like this weathers slowly and fails one slab at a time, so a slipped slab on its own does not condemn the roof. We count how many have shifted, whether the fixings or the timbers under them have given way, and how much of the original can be saved and put back. Replacement stone has to match the old in size, colour and thickness, which is why the work cannot be hurried. Our Horsham stone roofing page explains the repair routes in detail, and why a patch is sometimes the better call than a relay.

1.2 Peg tiles, hips and the fixings behind them

A peg tile gets its name from the wooden peg that once hung it on the batten, and it is a small clay tile in the plain-tile family. Modern repairs normally nail it, with clips added where the exposure needs them. Hipped roofs bring hips of their own, the sloping outer corners where two faces meet, each finished with a row of ridge-style tiles. BS 5534 was revised in 2014, and under it a ridge or hip tile is held by more than the mortar bed beneath it: a screw, clip or similar fixing goes in as well. A building conservation article warns against applying the usual sixty-year clay tile figure to old peg-tile roofs, so each one has to be read on its merits. Our surveyor photographs the slope, then the underside of it, and you get a verdict in writing before any price.

St Andrew's is Steyning's parish church, a Church of England building put up partly in ashlar and partly in flint and rebuilt by Fecamp abbey between the late eleventh and mid twelfth centuries. It anchors the old town, and the streets around it show how Steyning grew outward: first the old streets close to the church, then the railway end of town, then the estates of the post-war years. Each ring of building brought its own roofing fashion, and each fashion has its own weaknesses. The town lies mostly north of the South Downs, just west of the River Adur, and the county history notes a port there in the eleventh century. The railway of 1861 accelerated building at the east end, and the greatest expansion came after 1945.

3.1 The church, its exemption and your roof

With St Andrew's in regular Anglican worship use, works to it follow the faculty route, which the Church runs, and the council does not. Neighbouring houses follow the ordinary rules: listed building consent where a house is listed, planning rules where they apply, and building control for notifiable work. Ask Horsham District Council whether any Article 4 direction touches your street before you plan to alter how the roof looks from the road; a direction, where one exists, can remove rights the house would otherwise have.

3.2 East-end railway houses and post-war estates

Houses built near the railway after 1861 and the housing laid out after 1945 make up the bulk of Steyning's newer stock, and their roofs are a separate case from the stone and clay of the old centre. Marley puts the expected life of concrete tiles at around 60 years and stresses it is no guarantee, so a post-war roof is now at an age when ridges, verges and underlay start to deserve attention. Where the ridge still sits on a bed of mortar alone, it falls short of BS 5534 as revised in 2014. The verge, meaning the tiled margin that overhangs a gable end, needs the same care as the ridge. We re-fix ridge and hip tiles mechanically, renew the verge pointing, and look at the underlay from the loft. Gutters and fascias from the same decades often need a look at the same visit, since scaffolding for one job can serve the other. A roof like that often needs an overhaul and not a replacement, and we put that in writing if it is true. Our roof repairs page covers the smaller jobs, and where a replacement really is the better answer, the survey photographs make that case themselves.