Roofers in Wisborough Green

St Peter ad Vincula, listed Grade I, stands on a low mound, and its roofs are stone. E Christian restored the church in 1867 and 1868 and kept the Horsham slab roofs, which the Sussex Parish Churches survey calls some of the finest in Sussex. Anyone with an old house nearby can learn something from that. A Horsham slab is a thick sandstone slate, split by hand and hung in diminishing courses, which means rows that shrink from big slabs along the eaves (the bottom edge of the roof) to small ones up by the ridge, where the two slopes meet at the top. If your own roof is stone, the questions below apply to you directly.

1.1 What a slab roof asks of a roofer

Stone is heavy, and the timbers under it were sized for that load. The Planning Portal says building control approval is needed if the replacement covering weighs 15 per cent or more above the old one, so we weigh a repair against a relay long before anything is ordered. A few slipped or split slabs can be lifted out and swapped, with the sound ones rehung alongside. A slope that sags, or has shed slabs across a wide patch, needs a relay: strip it, sort the stone, renew the battens (the timber laths the slabs hang from) and the underlay beneath the slabs, then lay the best slabs back in order, biggest at the bottom. Our Horsham stone roofing page describes the process course by course.

1.2 Lead against uneven stone

Slabs are thicker and less regular than slate, so the gap beside a chimney or wall is not a neat line. Lead flashing, the sheet-metal weathering that keeps rain out of that joint, has to be dressed to the stone's contours and chased into the wall, never smothered in sealant. It is slow work, and it is where a stone roof either stays dry for decades or starts to let in water around the chimney. We would rather spend the extra hour at the stack than come back to it.

1.3 St Peter's own route, and yours

St Peter's falls under Church of England rules, so changes to the building are decided through the faculty process rather than by listed building consent, and exterior development still has to satisfy the planning system. A house takes a different route. If yours is listed, anything altering its character requires listed building consent, and mending it in matching stone is normally the way to stay clear of that. We read what is actually on the slope, photograph all of it and then tell you which side of the line the job falls. Our guide to stone roofs in a conservation area goes further.

The A272 crosses the River Arun at Newbridge, once the highest point of the Arun Navigation and the southern end of the Wey and Arun Canal. Wisborough Green therefore has water close by, and for roofs that matters in small ways. A house near a river or under mature trees gathers leaves, moss and damp air, and trouble tends to show in the gutter before it reaches the roof. We start with what the water is doing, because a blocked outlet or sagging gutter run can soak the fascia, the long board fixed under the roof edge to carry the gutter, and the rafter ends behind it. That is a bigger job than clearing leaves, and it is cheaper to catch early.

3.1 Chimneys, lead and flat extensions

Where an older village house has a chimney stack, lead flashings seal it to the slope, and where a later extension or garage has a flat roof, that roof has weak points of its own. They fail in different ways. A flashing lifts when the mortar line behind it crumbles, and rain tracks down the inside of the wall long before any ceiling mark appears. A flat roof lets go at its edge trims and joints. In both cases we look at the whole detail rather than the one visible mark, and we say whether a repair will hold or whether renewing is the sounder call. For stacks, our chimney repairs page runs through the options, from repointing to a rebuild.

3.2 Scaffold on a village road

If your house fronts the road, a re-roof may need scaffold standing on the highway, and the Highways Act requires a licence for it, which West Sussex County Council issues as highway authority, and it asks for 10 working days' notice before the poles can go up, with a one-month licence priced at £266. We plan that wait into the programme once you accept the quote, so nobody is caught short, and a neighbour whose drive is affected hears about it early. Roosting bats and active nests are covered by wildlife law, which is why we check the eaves and ridge for signs of them before a roof is opened. At the end the rubbish leaves with us and the lane is swept, so the house looks as it did before we arrived, apart from the new roof.