Roofers in Storrington

Storrington sits on a band of Folkestone Formation sandstone, about 800 metres wide, directly beneath the Downs. That rock is the source of the brown sandy ironstone, called Carstone, that built several of the conservation area's houses and walls. The council's appraisal and management plan lists the local building materials as Carstone, some imported stone, Sussex brick and flint, some Horsham slab stone slates and many types of local clay tile. The village centre is a conservation area, with an appraisal and management plan from Horsham District Council. Mixed materials like these tell you something about the roofs: they were put up over several centuries, by different hands, and each repair since has made a choice about what to match. The first thing we do is read the roof the way a surveyor would, slope by slope, noting which parts are original, which are patches, and where one has begun to undo the other.

1.1 Where the roof meets the stone

On a Carstone or flint cottage, the weak points are the abutments, the places where a sloping roof runs into a wall or a chimney stack. The flashing is a lead strip cut into the brickwork's mortar and folded down over the tile surface. In soft old pointing the cut can loosen, and rain tracks behind it. A good repair raises the lead, renews the joint with a mortar suited to the wall, and lays the lead back to shed water. Our chimney repairs page covers the stacks that go with these walls.

1.2 Plain tiles that are hung, not just laid

The appraisal says plain clay tiles became common from the mid 17th century. Each plain tile is a small flat slab of clay that hangs from timber battens, the thin strips that carry every course, and overlaps the courses beneath it. Because each tile is small, a slipped one is easy to replace, and a matching handful from a salvage yard is often the right answer on a village roof. It is also why we photograph a slope before we price it: the sounder tiles can stay, and only the failed ones go. Where battens have rotted or fixings have failed across an entire slope, we tell you that and show you the evidence. Nobody should be sold a new roof because three tiles have slipped, and equally nobody should be told a tired roof is fine when it is not.

Storrington has never had a railway connection, and the appraisal says that has helped the village keep its character. A weekly market was granted to Thomas, Earl of Arundel, in 1400, along with three annual fairs, although Storrington lost its market in the early 19th century. The settlement is therefore old, and many of its roofs belong to buildings that were altered a piece at a time, often with one slope done and the next left alone. The South Downs National Park reaches the southern edge of the conservation area, so some houses sit on one side of a boundary and some on the other.

3.2 St Mary and the Priory Church

St Mary the Virgin on Church Street is the parish church, listed at Grade II*. Storrington's parish church is Anglican and still holds services, so the ecclesiastical exemption applies and repairs go through the faculty system; planning permission is still needed for anything altering the exterior. The Roman Catholic Priory Church of Our Lady of England, built between 1902 and 1909, follows its own denominational process instead. For either, the first conversation is with the church itself, well before anyone talks about a price or a start date. Our part is to survey the roof and set down what we see.

Practical points apply anywhere in the village. Should scaffolding have to stand over a public highway, a highway licence from West Sussex County Council is needed, applied for at least 10 working days before the scaffold goes up. Bats and nesting birds can live under a roof and both are protected, which is why we check the eaves and roof space before any stripping begins. If the Building Regulations make a job notifiable, we walk you through it and file the notification, and when we leave the site is swept and the waste goes with us.