A Wiltshire market town street with stone and brick houses and clay tile roofs

Roofers in Hilperton

Hilperton is a Wiltshire village just beyond the north-eastern edge of Trowbridge, 10.7 road miles east of Bath. It grew fast in the twentieth century, so its roofs come from very different periods. We read the roof you actually have, repair where repair works, and match the covering when a section has to come off.

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Local roofs

A small old village that became a large one

Hilperton is an old settlement with a recent history of growth. The parish counted 825 people in 1951, 1,928 in 1971 and 4,967 in 2011. That is a village multiplied several times over in sixty years, and the roofs show it. The Blind House, a limestone village lock-up from the mid-18th century, stands a short walk from estates laid out long after it, and the two cannot be treated alike.

The oldest buildings carry real status. Hilperton House dates from the 18th century and is Grade II* listed. St Michael and All Angels, the parish church, was largely rebuilt by T. H. Wyatt in 1852 to replace a 15th-century predecessor. A roof on or beside buildings like these is a question for Wiltshire Council before it is a job for a ladder, and we will tell you so when we see it.

Hilperton Marsh has a different story. St Mary's church there went up in 1889 from prefabricated corrugated iron components, and a chancel of stone and flint followed in 1899. It is a useful reminder that a roof in this parish could be stone, clay, concrete, felt or sheet metal, and that none of these should be assumed from the name of a street.

There is also a moving line to bear in mind. In April 2017 an area south of Hilperton Drive, with around 260 houses, passed from Hilperton parish to Trowbridge. If your home is near that edge, confirm the parish before you plan anything that needs consent. We survey for free, take photographs of your own roof, and follow with a written price that does not move.

Council
Wiltshire Council
From central Bath
10.7 road miles, east
Grade II* listed
Hilperton House, 18th century
Parish population
825 in 1951, 4,967 in 2011
Village lock-up
The Blind House, mid-18th century limestone

What we find

Loose bedding, tired felt and corroded sheets

Failed ridge and verge beddingOn estate houses of the later twentieth century, the mortar under the ridge tiles and along the gable edge cracks first. We press each ridge tile by hand, look for daylight along the verge, and refix with clips or screws so that no joint depends on mortar by itself.
Tired underlay at the eavesBeneath the battens, the underlay should intercept rain forced up and under the tiles and carry it down to the gutter. Old felt hangs in loops between the rafters and breaks down at the bottom course. We lift a few tiles there to see whether the failure is local or runs up the slope.
Corroded sheet metalOutbuildings, extensions and the odd older roof here may be profiled metal. We study the overlaps, the screws and any rust blooming from the cut edges, because corrosion travels outward from a fastener.

Four generations of houses in one parish

A population that grew sixfold in sixty years leaves roofs of every age on the same road.

When a place grows this fast, its roofs do not age together. A cottage near the church may carry its third or fourth covering. A house put up in the 1970s has another covering, another pitch and another weak point. A home from the last twenty years is different again, and its trouble tends to begin at details rather than across the main slopes.

That is why we do not start from the age of a street. We start with the roof. On the first visit we identify the covering, then look at the battens, the laths under the tile courses, and check whether any underlay survives at all. From the loft side we look for daylight, damp marks on the rafters and tiles that have been swapped in out of sequence. Each fault is photographed and goes into the report, so the report shows you each defect we describe.

The choice that follows is usually between repairing and replacing. Where four or five tiles have dropped on an otherwise healthy roof, we will recommend a repair and nothing larger. Once a whole slope is spent, patching only postpones the bill, and you get a fixed price for a proper re-cover.

Size decides whether Building Regulations come into it. The Planning Portal sets the tests. Work that touches a smaller share of the whole building than a quarter, and under half the roof, is not normally notifiable. Larger jobs are, and may pull in an insulation upgrade. Weight is a separate trigger: once a new covering gains 15% over the old, approval and a structural check follow, whatever the area. Any notification is ours to make, to the council's own team, or to a registered private approver.

Often the most useful step is simply to learn what you have. Our pitched roofing work begins with exactly that.

825

People in Hilperton parish in 1951

1,928

People in the parish in 1971

4,967

People in the parish in 2011

Figures: Hilperton parish history, Wikipedia, checked October 2026

The old core around the church and the lock-up

Grade II* status and a rebuilt Victorian church mean the roofs at the centre need care and consent.

The centre of Hilperton is where the oldest fabric stands. Hilperton House is listed at Grade II*, a high grade and a sign that the roof is inside the listing. The church was rebuilt by Wyatt in 1852, and the limestone Blind House survives from the days when a village kept its own lock-up for holding offenders overnight.

None of this is a typical domestic roof job. A listed house's roof is part of its list entry, and altering it calls for listed building consent, which Wiltshire Council decides. Two applications exist, one for listed building consent and one for planning permission, and officers prefer an approach before the work starts, not after it. Doing the work without consent is a criminal matter. No roofer can settle that for your particular house. We can write down the slate or tile, the lead and the fixings we would use, so the council has a definite proposal to answer.

Limestone and lime belong together. Where a chimney or parapet is built of stone, repairs are made with a lime mortar softer than the stone itself, so any moisture escapes through the joint instead of the face. Cement behaves the other way and keeps water in, so the stone beside it flakes. Flaunching, the sloped mortar crown that grips the pots and throws off rain, follows the same rule.

Lead is the other material worth understanding. Where a wall meets a roof, a strip of lead called flashing is dressed over the junction. Soakers are the small lead pieces tucked between tiles along the side of a stack, one per course. Each wears out gradually and unseen, which is how a dry loft turns damp without a single drip to warn you.

If your house is old and close to the centre, our chimney repairs page shows how stacks are repointed, re-flaunched and rebuilt.

Sheet metal, outbuildings and the Marsh church

A church built from corrugated iron in 1889 is a reminder that not every roof here is tile.

St Mary's at Hilperton Marsh was assembled in 1889 from prefabricated corrugated iron, and its stone and flint chancel arrived ten years later. Few homes look like that, but the idea of a light factory-made roof did not stay in one church. Garages, workshops, farm buildings and extensions across villages like this one are often roofed in profiled sheet, and sheet fails in ways that tile does not.

The first is rust. It begins where the coating has been scratched, at cut edges and around screws, then creeps along the sheet. The second is movement. Metal swells and shrinks with the weather, so the holes round each screw widen and admit water. The third is condensation, where a cold metal roof over a warm room drips from beneath, and the damp is easily mistaken for a leak from above.

Our job is to work out which of the three you have. A leak at an overlap or a screw is often cured with new sealed fasteners and mastic. Rust across the whole sheet is not worth patching, and the sounder route is to strip and re-cover. On a garage or outbuilding that might mean a new pitched covering, or a flat roof system. EPDM is a single synthetic rubber sheet laid over the deck. GRP is glass-reinforced plastic laid wet to cure into one continuous skin.

One caution applies to older sheeting. Some corrugated roofs of a certain age are asbestos cement, not metal. HSE guidance treats careful removal of intact sheets as non-licensed work, but substantial breakage changes the category, so we identify the material before anyone lifts a sheet.

If the building is detached, garage roof replacement goes through the choices.

Words you will hear

Overlap
Where one sheet is laid over the edge of the next so water runs off.
Mastic
A flexible sealant pressed into joints and around fixings.
Condensation
Droplets formed when damp warm air touches a cold surface, such as the underside of a metal sheet.

Estate roofs and the edge of Trowbridge

Where the parish line moves, it pays to know who to ask before you plan any work.

The houses that took Hilperton from hundreds to thousands are ordinary pitched roofs with ordinary faults, and they are the bulk of what we repair here. The sequence tends to repeat. A ridge tile loosens, the mortar beneath it crumbles, wind gets under the gable edge, and a gale shifts a handful of tiles. None of it is dramatic, and all of it is cheap to put right early and dear to put right after water has reached the timber.

A mortar bed alone no longer satisfies BS 5534:2014 for ridge, hip and gable-edge tiles, so each tile we re-bed also gets a clip or screw. Dry-fix takes that further. Metal or plastic clips, caps and seals secure ridge and gable edge with no mortar, with BS 8612:2018 covering how such kits are tested. For a 1970s or 1980s roof it is frequently the tidier long-term answer, since nothing remains to crack.

Valleys deserve their own look. At the inward angle between two roof planes, the channel between them collects everything both slopes shed. Leaves gather there, lead linings split along their joins, and the tiles either side can hide a fault that only shows inside. We lift the edges and look, rather than judge from the pavement.

Then there is the boundary. Some 260 houses south of Hilperton Drive were moved to Trowbridge in April 2017, so a home that looks as if it is in Hilperton may not be, and the reverse can be true. For roof work the point is small but real: if a question of consent comes up, check your parish with Wiltshire Council so you ask the right office. The council's own pages are at wiltshire.gov.uk.

For repairs at this scale, our ridge and verge repairs compares re-bedding with dry-fix for a roof like yours.

Mortar or dry-fix

A re-bedded ridge now needs mechanical fixings, and dry-fix removes the cracking mortar joint altogether.

Map showing the location of Hilperton.

Nearby

Roofers near Hilperton

Roofing services in Hilperton

Local questions

Four generations of Hilperton houses, your questions

Does a roof near Hilperton House or the church need consent for repair?

For a house, only if the building is itself listed, or sits where the council protects the setting, and Wiltshire Council answers that. Hilperton House is Grade II* and the church was rebuilt in 1852. The church, while it remains in use for worship, has its roof work approved by faculty through the Church of England diocese, not by the council. A like-for-like patch on a listed roof may raise little, whereas a different covering or a rebuilt stack normally needs consent first. We put the planned work in writing for the council to react to.

My house is on the old Hilperton Drive boundary. Does that change my roof work?

Not the work itself, because the roof is repaired the same way either side of the line. What changes is the parish, and with it the records and local contacts. About 260 houses south of Hilperton Drive moved to Trowbridge in April 2017, so if consent or building control is ever involved, confirm your address with Wiltshire Council before applying.

How do I tell whether my garage roof in Hilperton is asbestos cement or metal?

Look at the surface and the edges. Metal rusts and dents. Cement sheet is brittle, thick at the edge and often grey with moss. If you cannot tell, do not drill or break it. We identify the material at the survey, because intact asbestos cement can be removed with care as non-licensed work, while breaking it up makes the job notifiable.

Is dry-fix ridge worth it on a house built in the 1970s?

Often, where the tiles are sound but the mortar is not. Clips and caps hold the ridge mechanically, so there is no joint to crack. Whether it suits your roof turns on the shape of your tile and how sound the battens underneath are, and we check both on site before recommending anything.

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

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