Roofers in Street

Street was a quarrying place long before it was a shoe town, and its stone was carted to Glastonbury Abbey. Blue Lias is a sequence of limestone and shale layers, worked in the town's quarries from the 12th century onward. Layered stone behaves in particular ways. It splits along its beds, it flakes where water gets in behind the surface, and it responds badly to hard, dense repairs.

On a roof, this matters at the points where stone and covering meet. A chimney stack in Lias is exposed to wind and rain on every face. The top of the stack is where water enters first, so the cap, the flaunching and the upper courses are the likeliest to fail. Below the cap, the pointing and the lead flashings at the roof junction are the next concern. Gable copings and parapets are alike: horizontal faces that must shed water but are made of a material that does not like holding it.

Lime mortar is the long-standing answer. It is softer than the stone, so when the building moves a little the joint takes the strain, not the face of the stone. It is also more open, which lets moisture work its way out through the joint. A cement mortar does the opposite, locking moisture in and speeding decay of the stone round it. When we see a stack that has been patched with grey cement and is shedding flakes beside the repair, that is the cause.

Repointing is not complicated work, but it needs a mix matched to the stone and a joint finish that follows the original. Where a stone is too decayed to hold a joint, it can be cut out and replaced. A MyBuilder guide for 2026 puts typical UK chimney repointing at about £750, within a general repair range of £500 to £2,000, and the scaffold adds to that. Your own price follows the survey.

The chimney repairs service sets out how we handle stacks of every age.

Holy Trinity is a 14th-century church whose chancel was built about 1270, and which saw extensive restoration in the 19th century. Ivythorn Manor on Pages Hill was rebuilt in 1488, lay largely ruined, and was restored around 1904. Both are listed, Holy Trinity at Grade I and the manor at Grade II*.

A building with that sort of record has had its roof worked on repeatedly. Medieval timbers may sit under a Victorian covering, and early twentieth-century repairs may sit beside later ones. When we survey a roof like this, we try to read it as a sequence. Which parts are original? Which are replacements, and in what material? Where has lead been renewed, and where has it been patched with mastic or bitumen? The answers tell us where the weakest points are, and they show what a repair should match.

Matching is not a luxury on a listed building. The covering, the lead and even the fixings are part of what is protected. Altering them without listed building consent from Somerset Council is an offence, and the council's planning team is the place to start. Historic England's online list will confirm whether a building is listed and at what grade. Deciding what the law requires is for the council; our part is to write the proposed work up in the detail a planning officer will want.

Lead is the metal we expect to meet on roofs like these. It lines gutters, covers hips and ridges, and forms flashings round chimneys and walls. Lead moves with temperature, and where it has been fixed too rigidly it cracks at the corners. The flashing seals a junction in sheet lead, and the soakers sit beneath the covering where it abuts a wall. Our lead roofing page shows the details we work on.

We do not quote a lead weight without seeing the detail. We tell you what has failed, whether it can be patched and what a proper repair involves.