Roofers in Winscombe

A railway changes where people build. Winscombe's station stood in Woodborough, away from the church, and the Victorian growth of the village followed the line. Wherever late 19th-century terraces, villas and cottages stand in those streets, their roofs are now well into old age.

The pattern on a roof of that date is familiar. The rafters are softwood, cut and fixed by hand. The battens are narrow and may have been nailed with iron, which rusts. The covering could be natural slate, clay tile or a later replacement, which is why we identify it before anything else. Underlay, if there is any, is usually a later addition. The roof was built to last, but the parts that join it together are the first to give out.

On a roof of this date we go looking for fixing failure first. Slates slip out of line, one at a time, and a pattern of gaps along a course tells us the nails have rusted, not that the slates themselves have gone. A tile with a broken nib (the small lug at its top edge that hooks over the batten) tells a similar story. Where the fixings are weak across the roof, the answer is usually to strip the covering, keep what is sound, fit new battens and underlay, and re-lay with stainless or copper nails.

That kind of work falls under roof replacement, and we explain the options. Re-roofing may fall inside Building Regulations. Whether a re-cover is notifiable depends on how much of the building and the roof it touches, and the thresholds are set out further down this page. When it is notifiable we deal with that paperwork, and extra insulation can be required under Part L.

The Grade I listed Church of St James dates from the 15th century. Its chancel was added and the church restored in 1863. That makes it a building of several periods, with several roof structures, and the same is true of many older houses in the first part of the village. A roof there is often a patchwork of repairs: new battens in one place, old oak in another, a different covering on the extension.

A listed building is listed as a whole, roof included. For a listed house, North Somerset Council grants consent for changes as listed building consent, which is not an alternative name for planning permission, while St James, still holding services as an Anglican parish church, gets approval for roof work by diocesan faculty instead. We do not give legal advice, and we would not guess what the council will accept. What we can do is provide a clear description of the work: what is there, what has failed, what we propose to do and what materials we propose to use. A council officer can respond to that.

Church roofs and large older buildings have a particular weakness: lead. The gutters between roof slopes, behind parapets and under tower walls are lined in it, and sheet lead swells and shrinks as temperatures rise and fall. After many seasons it can split at its folds or slide slowly downhill. The splits let water into the walls, and it can run a long way before it shows. A leak in the nave can start from a gutter at the chancel.

Bats and nesting birds use old roofs. They are protected, and should evidence of either turn up, we pause the job and point you to Natural England before anything proceeds. That is rare in a domestic repair, but it does happen on older buildings.

We cover this kind of detail on the pitched roofing page.