Roofers in Witley

Witley parish lies largely on the Lower Greensand, with its south-east corner on Atherfield and Wealden clays, and the church in the village shows the local geology in its walls. All Saints is built of sandstone rubble from the district, dressed with the same stone or with Bargate stone. Its roofs tell a longer story. Horsham slabs, thick stone slates with an uneven, ground-hugging look, still lie on some slopes beside ordinary tiles. The spire is covered in oak, split into thin tiles that make an altogether different surface from slate or clay.

1.1 Reading a stone roof before touching it

A slab roof weighs far more than a clay or concrete one, so the timbers beneath are built to carry it, and a roofer starts by looking at the frame as well as the stone. Courses step down in size, large slabs low on the slope and small ones near the top, and that gradation is where the soft, stepped texture comes from. Lift a few and you often find that the pegs or nails holding them failed long before the stone did. Our Horsham stone roofing page explains how the stone is lifted, graded and laid again, and why reusing sound slabs is nearly always better than swapping in something lighter that changes the whole character of the house.

1.2 The consent route for a Church of England roof

All Saints is a Grade I listed Church of England parish church. A church in use sits outside listed building consent, and the diocese's faculty process governs its roof work instead. The council's planning team can still have a say in anything that alters the outside appearance, so both routes get checked, and a church warden is the first person to ask about timing. We would never touch a church roof until that approval was in hand, and nobody else should either. The same care makes a good model for any old roof around the village: learn the material, learn who decides, then make the repair match what was there. A slate or tile that looks nearly right from the ground often turns out to be the wrong size or colour once it is beside the original, and in a village where the roofs are read as a group, that mismatch shows from the lane. We lay a sample out on the roof for you to judge before the order is placed.

Witley's 7,210 acres sit largely on Lower Greensand. West of the village, Witley Common is an extensive stretch of heather linked to Thursley Common and the waste running up to Hindhead. The parish is inland, and where a house stands at the edge of that open ground its roof takes the wind and whatever the wind carries off the heath.

3.1 Heath edges, windblown litter and valleys

The valley is the trough formed at the foot of two meeting slopes, and it collects the rainwater of both. It is the busiest drain on the roof and the least visited. On a house whose garden meets open heath, valleys and gutters catch windblown litter, and a blockage pushes water under the tiles at the one spot designed to carry it away. A look into the valleys after autumn is worth far more than a glance at the ridge. Our guttering, soffits and fascias page explains how gutters are cleared, realigned and renewed, and how the board behind them is checked for rot. Bracken, seed heads and leaf litter all end up in the channel sooner or later, and a gutter that overflows at one end can keep a masonry wall damp through several winters before any mark gets noticed.

3.2 A verdict before a price

Every survey ends with photographs and a decision: mend it, hold it for a season, or renew it. We favour the smallest job that properly solves the problem. A handful of cracked tiles is a repair, not a reason to re-roof, and you see the pictures so you can judge for yourself. When a roof is past mending we say that just as plainly, and explain what moves the cost: access, the covering you choose, and the condition of the timbers once the old tiles are off.

3.3 Re-roofing and the Building Regulations line

On the Planning Portal's figures, a building control application is not usually needed where less than 25 per cent of the building envelope, and less than 50 per cent of the roof, is touched by the job. A much heavier covering changes that, and so does structural work. A stone roof is a good example, because changing from stone to a lighter or heavier material alters the load the frame was built for, and that is a question for the building control body before any order is placed. Ask Waverley Borough Council to confirm the position for your house, and leave the Building Regulations notification to us whenever the work calls for one.