Roofers in Tangmere

Tangmere is a small parish of 775 acres of light soil, suitable for corn and sugar beet, and it sits on the coastal plain south of the Chichester to Arundel road. At the heart of the old village is the church of St Andrew, built of flint rubble that has been plastered over, with a few reused Roman bricks still visible in the walls. Its roofs are of tile, and its little bell-cote is clad in timber. Churches like this show how a village was roofed before the days of factory-made tile: the cover is clay, the walls are flint, and the two meet at lead flashings that have to follow an uneven line. A conservation area is recorded for Tangmere, and Chichester District Council can confirm whether its boundary takes in your house.

1.1 What a tile roof beside flint needs

Flint is a hard, irregular stone set in lime or cement mortar. Where a tiled roof runs against a flint wall, the top edge of the lead is turned into a mortar joint and wedged with lead wedges. Over the years the joint cracks and the lead lifts, and rain gets behind it. Re-pointing the joint and re-dressing the lead is a small, precise job, usually done from a single scaffold lift or a roof ladder, and it can cure a damp patch that was blamed on the tiles. Clay tiles themselves can last a long time. For clay, Marley passes on the Building Research Establishment's minimum of 60 years, while a building conservation writer cautions that on an old peg-tiled roof that number says little. What fails first is usually the batten nails, so a survey lifts a few tiles and looks underneath. Our roof repairs page explains what a small repair involves.

1.2 Listed buildings and church roofs

Where a house or outbuilding is listed, listed building consent from the council covers any work that would alter its character. A place of worship still in use can sit under the ecclesiastical exemption instead, with its own denomination's approval process in place of that consent, so the church authorities are the people to ask before anything is planned. We read any list entry before we recommend a material, and we check with the district council where there is doubt. A like-for-like repair using the same tile is a very different matter from a change of covering, and we explain which one your roof needs.

Beside the housing lie the commercial sites, and in a parish of this size a field is never far from a roofline. Tangmere Airfield Nurseries built large glasshouses on former airfield land to grow peppers and aubergines, and the derelict airfield buildings that stood empty until 1983 show how much roof area one site can hold. Large roofs do not behave like house roofs. The pitch is shallow, the sheets are long, and a single leak can travel a long way along a purlin before it drips. The long gutters between spans collect leaf litter and silt, and a blocked valley gutter is behind many a leak in a big building. Glasshouse glazing is a specialist trade of its own, but the sheeted, felted and flat roofs of the buildings around it are the kind of work covered on our commercial roofing page.

3.1 Asbestos cement on older sheds

The HSE's guidance is blunt: if the structure dates from before 2000, whether built then or refurbished then, treat asbestos as present until someone has checked. If an older shed or outbuilding here is roofed in cement sheet, that advice applies to it. Taking weathered asbestos cement away with care, in whole sheets, is non-licensed work. Once the sheets break up or suffer heavy damage, the job turns into notifiable non-licensed work, and household or farm asbestos waste still needs the proper paperwork, a consignment note. Asbestos cement roofs are also fragile, so nobody should climb onto one without crawling boards, edge protection and a safe plan. If you are unsure what the sheets are, do not drill, cut or break them, and book a survey first. Moss and lichen on cement sheet are no proof either way, and pressure-washing a sheet roof throws fibres into the air, so cleaning is a question to settle at the survey and not on a Saturday morning with a hire machine. A roof that is a mix of old sheet and newer metal profiles needs each part identified separately.

3.2 Flat sections and the question of falls

Flat sections on a large building are laid to a finished fall of at least 1:80 under BS 6229:2025, and designed steeper so that ponding does not set in. Where water sits for days after rain, the covering ages faster and the deck beneath can soften. Chichester District Council handles planning and building control for Tangmere. Where scaffold stands over a public highway, the county council, West Sussex, must license it first, and it asks for a minimum of 10 working days' notice.