Roofers in Cam

The Parish Church of St George, to the south of the village centre, is medieval and Grade I listed. Whether or not your own home is anywhere near it, the older streets of Cam are the part of the village where the covering is most likely to be original, or a careful replacement of the original. That matters, and our habit on such roofs is to restore what was built rather than redesign it.

A listed building has its roof protected along with its walls. Changes need listed building consent, a different permission from planning permission. Here it comes from Stroud District Council, which is also the local planning authority here. St George's itself sits outside that system, since an Anglican church that is still used for worship needs a diocesan faculty for roof work instead. The council's own pages are the right place to start, and you can read its guidance at stroud.gov.uk. A straight swap of like for like may raise little comment. Changing the material, forming a new opening or rebuilding a chimney generally has to be agreed first.

Outside the listings, older houses are simply old, and the same discipline applies. Slate goes back as slate and clay as clay. Lime-based mortar suits soft old masonry and cement does not, so we use lime for stacks and bedding on older walls. Before a single tile is lifted we look at what is under it: the underlay, the rafters and the battens, which are the slim timbers the covering is fixed to. Rot found at the eaves tells you more about the next ten winters than the surface does.

Where a repair is enough, we repair. Where the fixings or timbers have run out, we tell you openly and explain what a re-cover would involve, with the sound material reused where it can be. Our roof replacement page sets out that process from strip to finish.

Cam is contiguous with Dursley, and both sit on the edge of the Cotswolds, where the escarpment drops towards the Severn Vale. That has little to do with the postcode and a lot to do with how the weather arrives. Roofs below an escarpment can get rain coming off the high ground and wind funnelled through the gaps between buildings. We cannot give you a rainfall figure, but we can say what that does to a roof: it finds loose fixings and blocked gutters quickly.

The pattern we see when we are called to a leak is usually simpler than people expect. A slipped tile lets a trickle through to the batten. A cracked flashing (the lead or metal strip dressed over a roof-to-wall or chimney joint) lets it track down inside the masonry. A blocked gutter overflows and soaks the fascia and the timber behind it. Each of these is a small, local fault, and each does more damage the longer it is left.

When water is coming in, the first call is to stop it with a temporary cover or patch, then plan the permanent repair. We prioritise leaks and storm damage. The permanent repair follows, with the cause fixed rather than only the symptom.

If you are claiming on home insurance, many insurers use a gust threshold of at least 55 mph to define a storm, and wear and tear is a common exclusion. A written report and dated photographs help a claim, and we can supply both. No claim is guaranteed to succeed, and the claim itself stays in your hands.