Victorian villas with slate roofs in a North Somerset town near the coast

Roofers in Long Ashton

Long Ashton sits 15.8 road miles west of central Bath, facing south across its valley. Our crews mend and re-cover roofs in the old village core, on the Victorian and Edwardian houses of Leigh Woods, a residential area inside the parish, and on the stone buildings beside the Land Yeo.

Get a free survey Call 01225 285181

Local roofs

A valley village on the old Weston road

Long Ashton is built on the south-facing slopes of a valley that runs from east to west, on the old road between Bristol and Weston-super-Mare. That aspect shapes everything about its roofs. The slopes catch the sun for most of the day, the valley floor collects the water, and the houses step up the hillside in lines that give a roofer plenty of gables, bays and chimney stacks to deal with.

The village keeps its history in plain sight. All Saints church dates from about 1380, and the arms of its founder, Thomas de Lyons, are on the outside of the tower. The Angel Inn near the church goes back to 1495 and began as a church-house. Further down the valley, the mill on the Land Yeo at Gatcombe is early 19th century, still has its internal machinery, and is Grade II listed. Stone has been quarried in the parish for lime burning, building and road making, so the walls here have a long local pedigree.

The parish also takes in the residential area of Leigh Woods, which has been built on since 1865 and was fully developed south of Nightingale Valley by 1909. Those houses were put up in a period that loved a complicated roofline, and a complicated roofline means more valleys, more flashings and more places for water to find a way in.

We work on all of it. Before recommending anything we climb up, study the covering and the timbers in front of us, and then send the pictures with a fixed price on paper.

Council: North Somerset Council
From central Bath: 15.8 road miles, west
Parish church: All Saints, about 1380
Oldest pub: The Angel Inn, 1495
Listed mill: Gatcombe, Grade II

What we find

Busy valleys, tired flashings and sun-worn felt

The Leigh Woods houses and their complicated roofs

Houses built between 1865 and 1909 have more junctions per square metre than most, and each junction ages on its own schedule.

Leigh Woods grew as an upmarket residential area from the mid-1860s, with houses in varying styles built up to the First World War. Bay windows with their own little roofs, tall gables, decorated ridges and chimney stacks on both flanks were common features of the period, and every one of those features made a join in the covering. A plain roof has a ridge, two eaves and two verges. A house from this period can carry many separate junctions, and the roof keeps water out only as well as the weakest of them.

The first part to look at is the valley, the sunken angle between two slopes. It gathers water from both and passes it to the gutter, so it works harder than any other patch of the roof. On older houses the valley is often lined in lead, laid in a channel under the slates on each side. Lead is long-lasting but it moves with the temperature, and a lining laid without enough allowance will crack along its folds. A crack of a few millimetres is enough to wet a rafter for years without anything showing in the room below.

The second part is the soaker, a small lead tab that sits under each course of slates beside a wall or chimney. Soakers are hidden by design. A damp bloom on a chimney breast usually sends us to the soaker above it, which is often a soaker that has corroded or slid out of place, combined with a flashing on top that no longer sits tight to the stone.

Matching matters on houses like these. A slate roof stays slate, a clay roof stays clay, and decorative ridge tiles are replaced with the same profile rather than a plain substitute. When a slope needs more than patching, our pitched roofing service covers the full re-cover.

What a south-facing slope does to a roof

Sun dries a roof out, which is its great advantage. It also ages the soft parts faster than the hard ones.

Houses on the south-facing side of the Long Ashton valley have a gift that north-facing roofs lack. Their slopes get the light, so rain dries off the covering quickly and the green growth that sits on shaded slates is less of a problem. For a pitched roof of tiles or slate, that is real help.

The same sunshine is harder on the parts that are not stone or clay. Bitumen felt and early plastic membranes dry out and crack at the eaves where they take the most heat. Sealants and mastics smeared round a failed flashing in an earlier repair shrink back from the edge. Painted timber on fascias and bargeboards loses its coat first on the sunny side. None of this happens in a year, but a roof that was patched ten years ago with sealant and left alone is a roof we always look at twice.

Fixings are the other quiet casualty. A ridge tile bedded in mortar on a south slope goes through a long cycle of heating and cooling, and the mortar shrinks and cracks. Mortar alone no longer counts as an adequate fixing on ridge, hip and verge tiles, so we screw or clip them down as well. Dry-fix systems skip the mortar bed altogether and are usually the tidier answer on a roof like this. The choices are set out under ridge and verge repairs.

Warm slopes can also hide loft problems. A loft that is warm in summer and damp in winter can have condensation on the underside of the covering, which looks like a leak but is not one. We check ventilation at the eaves and ridge before anyone orders a new roof to fix something a vent would have cured.

Myth

A sunny slope stays dry, so it needs less attention than a shaded one.

Fact

Sun dries the surface, but heat cycles crack mortar, perish felt and shrink old sealant, so the hidden parts of a south slope still need checking.

The old core: church, inn and listed roofs

Around All Saints and the Angel Inn, the buildings are old enough that the first question is what the law says, not what the roof needs.

The oldest part of Long Ashton gathers around All Saints church and the Angel Inn. The church dates from about 1380, and the inn from 1495, when it served as a church-house. Buildings of that age were repaired and altered many times, so a roof here can be a patchwork of different centuries. We look for the pattern before the problem.

Worship continues at All Saints, so its roof falls to the diocese's faculty process, but for a listed house the rule is different. A listing shelters the roof along with the walls. Altering it needs listed building consent, and in Long Ashton the body that grants it is North Somerset Council. Consent differs from planning permission, and work done without it risks enforcement, so ring the council before you book anyone. Historic England's website explains how listing works if you want to read up first.

Not every old house in the village is listed, and not every listed one needs consent for every repair. Replacing a few slipped slates with matching ones is a different question from changing the covering or rebuilding a chimney. A legal ruling on your own building is not ours to give. We can set out the material, the method and the lead detailing in ordinary language, so that your call or letter to the council can be specific.

Building Regulations are a further hurdle. The Planning Portal's re-roofing guide shows when a re-cover needs approval and when a heavier covering brings in a structural check. If our work falls under notification, we arrange the sign-off with the council's building control team or a private registered approver.

A roof survey on an old building also looks at what lies beneath: the rafters, the wall plates, and whether any earlier repair has trapped water.

1380

Approximate date of All Saints church

1495

Date of the Angel Inn, a former church-house

1865

Year Leigh Woods began to be built on

Figures: Long Ashton entry, Wikipedia, checked October 2026

Gatcombe mill, quarry stone and lime

A parish that burned its own lime and cut its own building stone has walls that want repairing in kind.

Stone has been quarried in the parish of Long Ashton for lime burning, building and road making, and the buildings show it. Along the Land Yeo at Gatcombe stands an early 19th century mill, Grade II listed and still holding its machinery. A working building like that ages in a particular way: the roof exists to protect the timber and iron beneath it, so when the roof fails, the real damage lands on what it was sheltering.

Old masonry and old roofs behave as one system. A stone wall built with lime mortar breathes, taking in moisture and giving it back through the joints. If the roof above it leaks, or if the wall is repointed in hard cement, that balance goes wrong, and the stone starts to decay around the joint instead of in it. Heritage guidance is consistent here: hard cement speeds up decay in soft stone, so the bed for the chimney's flaunching should be lime.

On a stone building we use lime for flaunching and pointing at stacks, and we match the covering. A stone-slated or natural slate roof is re-covered in the same material, reusing sound old pieces and bringing in new or reclaimed ones to fill the gaps. If a parapet or valley gutter sits behind a stone wall, we open it up, check the lead, and repair or renew it with proper falls so water drains away rather than standing.

Lead work has its own vocabulary. A drip is a step in a lead sheet that lets water run off a flat run and over the next. A roll is a rounded timber core that the lead is wrapped over to form a joint. Both are traditional details, and both should be reproduced when the lead is renewed. Our lead roofing page covers what the work involves, and our chimney repairs page covers stacks, from repointing to a full rebuild.

Words you will hear

Valley: The sunken angle between two slopes, where their rainwater collects.
Soaker: A lead tab under each slate course beside a wall or chimney.
Flaunching: Mortar sloped around chimney pots to carry rain away.
Flashing: Sheet lead sealing the gap between a slope and masonry.

Nearby

Roofers near Long Ashton

Roofing services in Long Ashton

Local questions

Asked in the valley and up in Leigh Woods

Do the houses in Leigh Woods need different roof repairs from the old village?

They often do. The Victorian and Edwardian houses built from 1865 on tend to have busier rooflines, so more of the work is in valleys, bay roofs, soakers and flashings than in the covering itself. The old village core, around the church and the Angel Inn, tends to bring questions of listing and matching materials first. In both cases we survey the actual roof before suggesting anything.

Is a south-facing slope really any different to repair?

The covering is repaired the same way, but the checks differ. Sun-facing slopes dry quickly and stay cleaner, yet they push felt, sealant and mortar through harder heat cycles. We look closely at the eaves underlay, old sealant repairs and bedded ridge tiles, which are the parts that suffer most from that kind of exposure.

Who do I speak to about consent for an old building near the church?

The local planning authority, which for Long Ashton is North Somerset Council. Roofs on listed buildings are protected with the walls, so make the call before any job larger than a minor like-for-like mend. We will write up the proposed materials and methods so you have a clear document to hand the council.

Can you reproduce lead drips and rolls on a traditional stone building?

Yes. On older stone buildings we renew lead with the same traditional details, so the drips, rolls and falls work as they were designed to. We lift the surrounding covering to check the timber beneath first, because a lead gutter is only as sound as the boards it lies on, and replacing the lead without looking underneath can hide a bigger problem.

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