Bristol Victorian terraced houses with slate roofs and bay windows on a hill

Roofers in Hawkesbury Upton

Hawkesbury Upton stands 16.6 road miles out from central Bath, bearing north, on the Cotswold Way close to the Cotswold Edge. Up on the edge, verges, ridges, flashings and gutters are the parts the wind reaches first, so any repair or re-covering starts there and is finished to suit the limestone houses of the village.

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Local roofs

A limestone village on the Cotswold Edge

Hawkesbury Upton lies on the Cotswold Way, close to the A46, and uses local limestone in the majority of its buildings, as several Cotswold villages do. Half a mile out, on the road towards Hillesley, the Somerset Monument stands on the escarpment. It is an ashlar tower of 1846, designed by Lewis Vulliamy, tapering slightly and about 100 feet high. It tells you where the village sits: on high, open ground close to the edge of the escarpment.

That position is the first thing we consider on a Hawkesbury Upton roof. Weather arrives here without much to slow it, so a roof is tested by gusts and driven rain more often than a roof tucked into a valley. A slate or tile that is sound but badly fixed will move first, and a ridge or verge bedded in old mortar is the next to go.

The second thing is the stone. Limestone walls take the roof's edges, chimney stacks and gutters, and they are set in lime, which behaves differently from the cement used on later repairs. A good roof repair on a stone house respects the wall it sits on as well as the covering above it.

The village is also a community with its own gathering places. The Hawkesbury Horticultural Show has run at the village hall and recreation ground continuously since 1885, and halls, sports buildings and sheds on a site like that have roofs of their own. We survey those as readily as a cottage, and we write up what we find in the same plain way.

Council: South Gloucestershire Council
From central Bath: 16.6 road miles, north
Building stone: Local limestone in the majority of buildings
Landmark: Somerset Monument, 1846, on the Cotswold Edge
Routes: Cotswold Way and the A46

What we find

Wind on the Edge and flashings against limestone

Living with the wind on the edge

An exposed village roof fails at its edges first, so that is where we begin.

On a sheltered street a roof can ignore a lot of weather. On high ground close to the Cotswold Edge it cannot. The wind comes across open land, hits the gable end of a house and goes up and over, and the pressure it creates is greatest at the verge and along the ridge. Those are the places where tiles and slates are held least securely, and they are the places we look at first.

A verge is traditionally finished with mortar. Over years, the mortar cracks and loosens, rain gets behind it and the end tiles begin to rock. The ridge is similar: a line of ridge tiles bedded on mortar along the top of the roof, with nothing but the bed holding them down. Modern practice has moved on. Under BS 5534:2014, the code of practice for slating and tiling, a mortar bed counts as insufficient by itself for ridge, hip and verge pieces and asks for a mechanical fixing as well.

The alternative is dry-fix: clips, caps and rubber-backed seals take the place of the bed, and the product range is tested to BS 8612:2018. On a plain-tiled or concrete-tiled roof in an exposed spot, dry-fix is often a tidy and durable choice, because there is no bed to crack. On a natural stone or slate roof, the choice depends on what the roof looks like from the lane, and we will say if a dry system would spoil the line you want to keep.

Underneath, we check the underlay. That is the membrane laid across the rafters, with battens (the laths that carry the covering) nailed over it, and its job is to shed any rain that blows past the tiles. In an exposed place the underlay does more work than it would elsewhere, and an old one that has gone brittle is a common reason for a loft stain below a roof that looks perfect from outside.

If the problem is one rocking verge or a short run of ridge, the repair is small and we price it as such. Both approaches have their own write-up under ridge and verge repairs.

Words you will hear

Verge: The sloping edge of the roof above a gable end.
Dry-fix: A mortar-free way of holding the ridge and verge in place.
Underlay: The second line of defence, fixed over the rafters and hidden by the covering.
Battens: Thin timbers running across the roof, to which every tile or slate is hooked or nailed.

Limestone walls, stacks and the lime beside them

The stone tells you what mortar to use, and what a chimney is likely to need.

In a village built from its own limestone, the chimney stack is usually the same stone as the wall, carried up past the ridge. It is the most exposed part of the house, standing clear of the roof with weather on every face. Water gets in at three places: the flaunching, the pointing and the flashing.

Flaunching is the cap of mortar, sloped to shed rain, that seats the pots at the head of the stack. Once it cracks, water travels down inside the masonry and shows up as a damp patch on the chimney breast in a bedroom or the loft. The pointing is the mortar between the stones, which loses its face to frost and wind. The flashing is the lead worked over the meeting of stack and slope, and it can lift, split or work loose where it was fixed with sealant rather than wedged into the joint.

The mortar matters. A soft limestone wall is designed to let moisture out through the joints. A hard cement repair stops that, and the water leaves through the face of the stone instead, which then flakes. The reverse is also true: lime is softer, so it takes the wear and the stone survives. On any older Hawkesbury Upton house, we use lime for pointing and flaunching, and the quote says so.

Soakers are a related detail. These are small pieces of lead, one per course of tiles, slipped under the covering along the side of a stack or wall and turned up against it. They are invisible from the ground and easy to forget, but when they fail, water runs in beside the stack long before anyone sees it.

Many repairs here are small: re-point a few courses, renew a flaunching, replace a length of flashing. Some stacks have lost so much stone that a partial rebuild is the right answer, and we will show you photographs to explain why. The chimney repairs page covers everything from a patch to a rebuild.

Myth

A thick coat of cement is the best way to weatherproof an old limestone chimney.

Fact

Cement outlasts the stone beside it and traps damp, so the limestone around the repair decays faster, whereas a lime joint lets the wall dry out.

Gutters, downpipes and water on a hillside

Rain that leaves a roof still has to get somewhere, and on a slope it often goes the wrong way.

Hawkesbury Upton stands on high ground near the Cotswold Edge, and wherever the ground falls away, water follows it. A gutter that spills at a joint, or a downpipe that discharges against a wall, does damage quickly where the ground drops and the stone is porous. The signs are green staining on the wall below an eaves line, damp in a ground-floor corner or a puddle that never dries by a doorstep.

Older houses in the village may have cast iron gutters on their original brackets. Cast iron lasts for a very long time if it is painted and cleared, and it suits the look of a stone house, but joints rust through and the brackets can pull away from the fascia or the wall. Aluminium and uPVC are lighter and easier to fit, and either can be right for a modern extension. What matters is that the run is level to its fall, the outlets are not blocked and the downpipe goes into a gully or a soakaway rather than onto a path.

Soffits and fascias are the timbers at the eaves. The fascia board takes the weight of the gutter, while the soffit panel shuts the eaves from underneath. If they are rotten, the gutter will not stay up, and the rot will usually have begun where a leaking joint kept them wet. We check the timber with a bradawl and tell you which of repair or renewal is the fairer answer.

Hedges and trees are the other local cause. Leaves, seeds and moss pack into a valley or a hopper and send water over the side. It takes only a clear run of a few minutes in a storm to saturate a wall. A regular clear-out is cheap compared to the damage a blocked outlet can do.

For anything that needs work, our gutters, soffits and fascias page explains the choices, including the scaffold that a two-storey run will need.

Planning a repair or a re-roof properly

Some roofs need only a few hours; others need a decision about covering, cost and consent.

Not every roof problem needs the same answer. A single slipped tile, a loose verge or a split flashing is a repair, and we do repairs where repair works. A roof whose battens are rotten and whose covering has failed in several places is a different case, and that is when a re-roof is the better value.

A re-roof raises questions about regulation. The Planning Portal's rule of thumb is that re-covering needs no Building Regulations approval provided the job touches only a small part of the building's outer shell and no more than half of the roof itself, as the Portal's two thresholds put it. Bigger jobs do need approval, and then the roof can be required to meet a better insulation standard. A change to a noticeably heavier covering, 15% extra weight or more, brings approval into play too, together with a structural check. Should the job be notifiable, we take care of the paperwork with your building control body. Here that means South Gloucestershire Council, or a private firm on the register of building control approvers if you prefer.

If your house is listed or lies in a conservation area, ask South Gloucestershire Council before any work starts. Planning permission and listed building consent are two different routes, and unauthorised work on a listed roof can be a criminal offence. The decision is the council's, not ours, but we can set out the covering, fixings and leadwork precisely so that your question to the council is a specific one. The council's own pages are at southglos.gov.uk.

The survey comes first. Someone goes up on your roof, takes pictures of what is there and writes a firm price for the work it calls for. Where the choice lies between mending and renewing, you get both options with the reasons. A repair that holds for years is a good result, and so is an honest recommendation to replace when repair no longer makes sense.

We clear the site when we finish and take the waste away. The workmanship is covered by our 10-year written guarantee.

Repair or replace

Mend it while the timbers beneath hold up and the faults stay local; renew it once the fixings are giving up across a whole slope.

Nearby

Roofers near Hawkesbury Upton

Roofing services in Hawkesbury Upton

Local questions

Hawkesbury Upton asks about wind on the Edge

Will a roof on the Cotswold Edge need different fixings from one in a sheltered street?

Often, yes. An exposed gable end puts the most load on the verge and ridge, so we use mechanical fixing there instead of mortar alone, and on a tiled roof we may recommend a dry-fix system. We also check the nail fixings across the field of the roof. On a limestone house with an older covering, the aim is to hold the roof down without changing how it looks from the lane.

Can you repoint the limestone chimney on my Hawkesbury Upton cottage in lime?

Yes, and lime is what we would normally recommend for stone of this kind. Being softer than the stone, it wears in the joint rather than the face. We rake out the old pointing, replace failed flaunching and check the lead flashing, then give you a written price for the whole stack. If it is listed, the council needs to agree any rebuild first.

Do you work on village halls and community buildings in Hawkesbury Upton?

Yes. We cover residential and commercial work, and a hall or pavilion gets the same survey as a house: pictures, a written scope and one fixed figure. Flat roofs on extensions and lean-tos are common on such buildings, and we can tell you whether a repair will do or whether the covering has simply run its course.

How do I tell whether water is coming from the roof or the gutter on my stone house?

Look at where the stain starts. A mark that begins at the eaves line and runs down the wall often means a gutter joint or hopper is leaking. A damp patch on a ceiling or chimney breast suggests the roof or the stack. If it is unclear, we check both on the survey and photograph the cause so you can see it.

Get your free survey

Get your free roof survey

Tell us what's happening and we'll call you back to arrange a visit. Prefer to talk? Call 01225 285181.

Photos of your own roof
A fixed price in writing
10-year workmanship guarantee