Roofers in Market Lavington

A covering is only as secure as the way it is held down. Market Lavington stands under an escarpment, with open chalk above it, and the wind that comes down that slope does not behave like the wind in a built-up street. It arrives in gusts, lifts at the eaves and edges, and works on anything that has begun to loosen. Tiles themselves are seldom the problem. The nails, clips and mortar holding them are.

Start at the top. Ridge tiles on older roofs sit in a mortar bed, and mortar cracks as the roof flexes through the seasons. Under BS 5534:2014, the standard for slating and tiling, you may not allow ridge, hip and verge pieces to depend on mortar alone, so each should be mechanically fixed as well. Any ridge we re-bed in the village gets that fixing. On a longer run we often suggest dry-fix: ridge pieces held by clips and sealed caps, a method covered by BS 8612:2018, needing no wet bedding.

The verge needs the same care. This is the sloping end of the roof alongside a gable end, with its final tiles pointed in. The pointing falls away over the years, and a gust then finds the end tile. We look at the whole verge from the ladder and again from inside the loft, because a damp stain on the gable wall often tells the story before the tiles do.

Beneath the covering, the underlay is a membrane stretched across the rafters, below the battens (narrow timber laths that carry the tiles). It catches rain driven past the tiles. In an exposed spot it can flap against the battens until it tears, and then the roof looks sound from outside while water reaches the loft.

Our rule is to repair where repair works. A scatter of slipped tiles on an otherwise healthy roof is a small job. Fixings failing across a whole slope make a re-cover, and then we keep the good tiles, renew battens and underlay and refix the lot. How that work is done is set out under pitched roofing, and the ridge and edge work under ridge and verge repairs.

Market Lavington has two Grade I listed buildings that most residents will know: the Old House and the parish church of St Mary. Grade I is the top tier of listing. Historic England describes the Old House as a 14th-century manor of roughcast stone with some brick, and the church was recorded as Grade I in 1962. Few houses in the village sit at that rank, but those two show how seriously older buildings are treated.

If your own house is listed at any grade, its roof forms part of what is protected. Consent for work comes from Wiltshire Council as the local planning authority, and it is a different permission from planning permission. Doing unconsented work on a listed building can be prosecuted, so the sensible first step is a call to the council's conservation officers before anyone puts up a ladder. We will not pretend to rule on your house, but we can describe the repair precisely enough to make that call short.

Matching what is there draws fewer questions than changing it. Slates or tiles of the same size and pattern, with lead in the same places, is a different proposal from altering the pitch, swapping the material or cutting in a roof window. On an unlisted house, ask the council whether your street lies in a conservation area or under an Article 4 direction, which withdraws some of the usual permitted development rights.

Building Regulations run alongside. A modest re-cover, affecting under a quarter of the envelope of the building and under half the roof, generally sits outside approval. Larger jobs fall inside it, as does any switch to a covering weighing 15% or more extra. Where approval applies, we deal with it through the Wiltshire building control team, or a private registered approver.

For slate and stone roofs on older houses, see our slate roofing page.

Figures: Market Lavington entry, Wikipedia, checked October 2026