Roofers in Coleford

Holy Trinity, built in 1831, and the Methodist chapel, built in 1865, are the two buildings in Coleford that most people picture when they think of the village's age. Buildings of their kind are usually one large room under one large roof, and that is the point from which any repair begins. A house roof is broken up by internal walls that stiffen it. A chapel roof has no such help: the trusses carry everything across the full width, and any weakness in a joint or a bearing shows as movement along the whole slope.

We go inside first. The questions are practical. Are there stains on the underside of the boarding? Is daylight visible between slates? Have any of the trusses dropped at their feet, where they bear on the walls? Does the plaster ceiling, if there is one, show cracks that line up with a rafter? Those answers tell us whether the job is a patch to a valley, a re-slate of the worst slope, or something that needs a structural opinion before a single slate comes off.

Outside, the details that fail are the same ones that fail anywhere, only larger. A long gable verge (the tiled strip that overhangs the end wall) catches every gust, and a loose tile there can fall on people below. A ridge that runs the whole length of a hall has many joints. A valley between nave and porch collects water from two roofs and any moss that falls into it.

Reaching these roofs safely matters as much as repairing them. Nobody should work from a ladder against a tall hall wall, so scaffold or a platform is priced in from the beginning. Our commercial roofing page covers the larger buildings we survey, and a church hall or chapel that is in community use is treated the same way: surveyed, photographed and priced in writing.

Should the building be listed, consent has to be agreed ahead of any work. Ask Somerset Council who deals with your building, and bring our written description with you.

Figures: Coleford, Somerset entry, Wikipedia, checked October 2026

Coleford stands on a river in the Mendip Hills, and you can feel it in the way a roof behaves. A slope that faces away from the sun, under trees or beside a bank, may take far longer to dry after rain than the same slope in an open field. The result is the same list of symptoms that every damp roof has: moss in the courses, algae on the surface, gutters carrying leaf litter and a sodden fascia.

Moss is not automatically a threat. A thin film on a sound tile does little. The trouble starts when growth packs into the lap between slates or tiles, holds water against the surface and lifts the edge of the unit above it. In a frost, trapped water expands, and a tile that is only a little tired starts to flake. We judge which kind of moss we are looking at before recommending anything.

Cleaning has its place, though it is not a cure for a failed roof. Pressure washing can damage delicate coverings, so we prefer gentler methods on older tiles and slate and we check each slope first. MyBuilder's 2026 cost guide puts roof cleaning at about £300 and upward, with a pitched roof typically £450 to £850; those are national ranges, and the figure we give you comes after we have surveyed.

Guttering matters more here than on a dry hillside. Houses near the river often have mature trees nearby, so leaf and seed drop is a constant feeding of the gutter line. We check that outlets are clear, that falls run to the downpipe, and that joints are sealed. If a downpipe discharges against a wall instead of into a drain, the damp you notice in the bottom metre of that wall may not be a roof fault at all.

Bats and nesting birds occasionally use roof spaces and eaves, and both are protected. If we find signs while surveying, we pause and take advice before touching anything, which is worth raising with us early if you know a colony visits.