Roofers in Keynsham

The remains of Keynsham Abbey are Grade I listed, and Bridges Almshouses were built around 1685. A town that preserves buildings of that age has a reasonable number of roofs to match, many of them repaired many times over by people with different skills and materials. The first task on any such roof is reading its history.

Look at an old roof from the garden on a bright afternoon. You may see slates of three or four slightly different colours, where repairs have been made with whatever was to hand. You may see a line where the pitch changes, from an extension. You may see a patch of cement along a ridge, which looks tidy but suggests that the original mortar has failed. Each of these tells us something about how the roof has behaved, and the structure underneath is the real record.

Natural slate and stone tile are long-lived materials, and they last much longer than their fixings. A slate whose iron nail has rusted away will slide, and only the timber and the underlay (a sheet laid below the battens to catch wind-driven rain) hold the water out. For that reason we often find that a roof has plenty of life in its slates and very little in its nails. In that case a re-slate that keeps the sound slate and replaces everything that holds it is more sensible than a full replacement. Our slate roofing page explains how we sort, keep and replace.

If your house is listed, or close to a listed building, ask Bath and North East Somerset Council what is needed before you plan any change. Consent for a listed building is its own application, apart from any planning one. We can describe the covering, lead and fixings we would use, which gives the council something specific to respond to.

Keynsham sits where the Chew meets the Avon, and in 1968 a great flood covered large parts of the town and destroyed its bridges. A roof is not a flood defence and we do not pretend it is. But the memory is a reminder that a house stands in a watercourse as well as under a sky, and every part of the roof's drainage should leave the water somewhere sensible.

Start at the gutter. A run that is full of silt, moss and leaves cannot take a heavy shower, and the overflow falls where the wall meets the ground. Over time that wets the lower courses of masonry, raises damp inside the house and softens the ground beside the foundations. We clear the run, test it with water, check the fall and look for open joints, then follow the downpipe to its outlet. If it discharges into a broken drain or on to a path that slopes towards the wall, the best gutter in the world will not help.

Flat roofs on garages, porches and extensions need a similar check. An outlet blocked by a ball of leaves turns a flat roof into a shallow pond, and the extra weight of standing water strains the deck. Look for a stain on the ceiling below, a soft patch when you walk on the surface and a surface that holds water for more than a day after rain. A flat roof that does so has lost its fall, and a patch will only delay a larger job.

Fascias and soffits belong to the same system. A fascia board carries the gutter, so when it rots, the gutter loosens with it. Repairs and costs for the whole system are set out under gutters, soffits and fascias. The typical UK range for guttering reported by the MyBuilder cost guide (2026) is £30 to £70 per metre, and we fix the price after seeing your roof.