Roofers in Bitton

Londonderry Farmhouse and The Grange are two of the Grade II* listed houses recorded in Bitton (Church Farmhouse is a third), and any house of that age shares their problems. The roof will have been repaired many times. Stone or clay tiles may have been replaced in patches, one slope may carry a different material from the next, and the structure beneath may have been altered by owners who had other priorities.

Repair on a building like this follows a simple order. Our first task is to separate the original fabric from later additions. Then we keep as much of the original as will do its job: sound tiles are lifted, sorted and relaid, and only the worn ones are replaced. Where new material is needed, it matches the old in type, size and colour, using reclaimed stock where we can find it.

The mortar matters as much as the covering. Lime mortar is gentler and more porous than cement, which lets moisture escape through the joints and spares the face of the stone or tile. Hard cement fixed to old stone traps water and speeds up its decay, which is why a patch repair in the wrong mortar often does more harm than the original defect.

Listing changes the process as well as the materials. Listed building consent is its own process, distinct from planning permission, and it comes from the local planning authority, which for Bitton is South Gloucestershire Council. Like-for-like repair may need little or none, whereas a swap of covering, a fresh rooflight or a rebuilt stack all have to be agreed beforehand. The ruling on your house belongs to the council, but we can describe the work precisely so that your enquiry gets a useful answer. Our listed pitched roofs guide goes into the detail.

Wherever an old timber is found sound, it stays. New ends and scarf joints are used only where a beam has lost its bearing in the wall.

Chimney stacks are the tallest and most exposed part of any house. In an older village like Bitton they are often built of stone and bedded in lime, and they stand clear of the ridge where every wind reaches them. If your house sits near the River Boyd or under mature trees, moisture lingers on the stonework and moss gathers on the stack, and the joints weather faster than they do on a dry, sunny elevation.

A stack has four places to check. The pots are held in a sloping mortar cap called flaunching, which sheds water and cracks with age. The stone below is pointed, and the pointing erodes until the joints are hollow. At the base, lead flashing dresses the junction with the roof, with soakers beneath. And inside the house, the flue lining and breast should be dry; a stain on the chimney breast usually tells you which of the first three has failed.

Repair means matching the old fabric, so we use a lime mortar that is weaker than the stone it joins, not stronger. A cement repair looks tidy for a season, and then the soft stone beside it begins to spall. The same warning appears in conservation advice for old stacks elsewhere: use lime for the cap and the joints, and keep cement away from soft stone.

Where a stack is leaning, cracked through or crumbling, a rebuild may be the honest answer. We take down the stack to a sound level, number the stones where they can be reused, and rebuild to the original profile. On a listed house, that work needs agreement from the planning authority first. The full range of stack work is set out under chimney repairs.

Green lower courses on a stack with dry upper ones can point to moisture coming up from the walls, not down from the roof, which is why we read the whole chimney before deciding what to repair.