Roofers in Westhampnett

The church and the village lie in the south of Westhampnett parish, on Stane Street. The parish covers 1,908 acres, and part of Goodwood Park makes up its north-east quarter, so a roofer here works on a village edge with parkland close by. The church of St Peter is listed Grade II*, and its fabric shows how the older buildings here were put together. Its walls are flint rubble, with some reused Roman bricks in the western part of the chancel. The roof itself is tile, except for the timber cap on the tower. A mixture like that tells you something useful about older buildings in general. They were repaired in whatever came to hand over the centuries, so a roofer today has to read each junction on its own merits and not assume one neat pattern runs across the whole roof.

1.1 Clay tile on an old building

Clay tile earns its place on old buildings. Marley puts clay at a minimum of 60 years in service, citing building research, while conservation writers warn that the figure is a poor guide to old peg-tile roofs. What fails first is rarely the tile. It is the nibs and the nails behind it, the softwood battens (the laths the tiles hang on) and the underlay beneath. When we survey a clay tile roof we lift a few tiles on each slope to look at those hidden parts, and we photograph what is there. A roof that looks worn from the street may need nothing more than refixing, and one that looks fine may have battens that crumble at a touch. Matching matters as well. A replacement tile of the wrong shade, grain or curve shows against an old roof for decades, so the existing tile is matched before an order goes in.

1.2 Lead and the places where roofs meet walls

Where a tiled roof runs into a flint wall, the junction is sealed with lead, let into the mortar and dressed over the tile surface. A flint wall is uneven, so the lead must be shaped to a ragged line, and that takes patient work. A wood-tiled tower cap is a timber craft in its own right, so our part is the tile, lead and gutters beside it. Our pitched roofing page follows a tiled slope through stripping and relaying, battens and underlay first and the ridge last.

The Old Workhouse, formerly Westhampnett Place, was completely burnt down on 3 November 1899. A lost roof is the worst case any building owner can imagine, and the story is a useful reminder of why chimneys, flues and roof timbers deserve a look every few years. A sound stack and a dry roof space are the best protection a house like this has. Tree cover is the other local feature. With parkland close by, a gutter under trees can fill with leaf litter and moss, and a blocked run sends water down the wall or back beneath the first row of tiles.

3.1 Gutters, leaves and moss

Moss on clay tiles keeps water sitting against the surface. A light covering is no great harm, but a thick pad lifts tiles and blocks the gutter beneath. Cleaning is usually gentle, by hand and brush, and we treat the roof only if the survey says it is worth doing. Catching the problem early matters more than any product, and for a tall farmhouse the gutters are also the part that needs a long ladder or scaffold, so it is sensible to combine a gutter clear-out with a roof check on the same visit. If you can see a green line along the eaves or a stain below a downpipe, that is the moment to book a look, before the water finds the timber behind the fascia. Our roof repairs page covers the small jobs that follow, such as replacing cracked tiles and refixing slipped ones.

3.2 Who decides what here

Westhampnett falls under Chichester District Council for planning and building control, and West Sussex County Council is the highway authority that issues any scaffold licence. The district council can say whether your address lies in a conservation area, and the National Heritage List for England shows whether a building is listed. A listed building needs consent before changes to its character, and a church still used for worship has a consent route set by its denomination. For like-for-like repair to an ordinary house, planning permission is not usually the issue. The survey report comes with pictures of your own roof, so every fault is in front of you before replacement is raised. Where a roof can be kept going with a repair, the repair is what we put forward, and if it cannot we explain why in plain words. Large old houses sometimes need both, a repair now on one slope and a plan for the rest, and you can take the work in stages. A roof of this age also deserves a look in the loft after a wet spell, with a torch, for daylight at the tile joints, damp rafter ends or stained underlay, because those signs show up from inside long before a ceiling stain appears.