The old village on North Road
Houses built before the expansion carry the marks of a century of small repairs.
The oldest homes in Stoke Gifford were not built as part of a plan. They went up along North Road over a long period, and it shows in the roofs. One cottage may have a clay tile covering laid on sawn battens (the timber strips the tiles are hung from), while its neighbour was recovered in something else entirely, in another colour. Neither is wrong, but each calls for its own approach.
Our first question on a roof like this is what was there originally and what has been done since. A patch of replacement tiles that sits a shade too red, a ridge re-bedded in hard grey mortar, or a valley (the trough that gathers water where two slopes join) relined in a modern product all tell us how the roof has been treated. We write that history down, because it tells us where the next fault is likely to appear.
The usual causes of a leak in a village house of this type are quiet ones. A tile slips because its nail hole has enlarged. The underlay, a membrane under the battens that stops driven rain reaching the loft, has perished at the eaves. The flashing round a chimney has lifted from the brickwork. None of these is dramatic, and a repair that fixes the cause is far better value than one that covers the symptom.
Where repair works, we repair. Replacing a tired but sound covering because it looks old is rarely sensible, and a good survey will separate the parts that need renewing from the parts that only need refixing. Where a roof has genuinely reached the end of its life, we match the tile or slate in size, colour and profile so that the house still reads as it did, and the new work sits comfortably next to its neighbours.
For the wider picture on tiled roofs, see our pitched roofing service, which starts at the rafters.