What is a hip iron?

Where the hip iron sits and what it does

A hip is the external corner of a roof where two slopes meet and run down at an angle, from the ridge to the eaves. It is capped with hip tiles, which are laid end to end along that diagonal line, much as ridge tiles run along the top. Because the hip is steep, gravity pulls every tile in the line toward the bottom.

The hip iron deals with that pull. It is a flat strap with a turned-up lip, shaped a little like a shallow hook, and it is fixed to the end of the hip rafter or the hip board down by the gutter. The bottom hip tile rests on the lip, which carries the load. The tiles above rest against each other and against the mortar or fixings that hold them, and the strap stops the whole column slipping off the roof edge.

It is a small part and easy to overlook. Most people never notice one, since it sits right at the gutter line, partly hidden by the first course of tiles. Yet it is the only thing between a failing hip bed and a row of tiles heading for the ground.

Why hips slip when the iron is missing

On traditional roofs the hip tiles sat on a mortar bed, with the hip iron taking the load at the foot. When the iron is absent, or rusted through, the bed alone has to hold back the weight of every tile above it. Mortar copes with this for a while. As it cracks, takes in water and loosens, the tiles begin to move.

A slipping hip leaves a recognisable pattern. The lowest tile pushes out past the edge of the roof, or the joints near the foot open up while those higher up stay tight. A gap appears between tiles in the middle of the run. In bad cases the whole line is leaning outward and the bottom tile hangs over the gutter.

Wind adds to it. Gusts across a hip lift the tiles slightly, which breaks the bond and lets them slide a fraction at a time. Frost does the same job over winters, forcing open the joints. Neither needs a dramatic storm; creep builds up over seasons until a tile drops.

Does a missing hip iron matter

It depends on the age and condition of the hip. If the hip tiles are firmly held with sound mortar and mechanical fixings, a missing iron may do little harm in the short term. If the bed is old, cracked or hollow, the missing iron is a real weakness, because the lowest tile has nothing under it.

The modern standard approaches hips with fixings in mind. BS 5534:2014 expects bedded hip and ridge tiles to have mechanical fixings, so that the mortar is not the only thing holding them in place, and a hip iron or equivalent end support is part of making a hip secure. A roof built before that, with mortar and nothing else, is more likely to be missing the support altogether.

We would not call a missing iron an emergency. We would call it something to put right when the hip is next opened, and sooner if you can see the lowest tile moving. A slipped hip tile can fall onto a path or a car, so any sign of movement is worth acting on.

What we do about it

At survey we look at the foot of each hip from the roof or a scaffold, since it cannot be seen properly from the ground. We check whether an iron is present, whether it is corroded, and how firmly the end tile is held. A bracket that has rusted or pulled away from its fixing is as bad as one that is not there.

Fitting a new iron is a small job on a roof that is already being worked on. The hip tiles near the foot are lifted, a stainless or galvanised iron is screwed to the rafter end, and the tiles are set back on a fresh bed with their own fixings. Where a whole hip has crept, the line is lifted and relaid, which is covered in our answer on replacing a ridge tile, though a hip needs more care because of the angle.

On an older roof we keep the tile type and the look of the hip as it was, with a mortar finish if that is what the house had, and the iron hidden where it always was. The point is a hip that looks unchanged and no longer moves.

What it costs

A hip iron itself is cheap. The cost is in reaching the foot of a hip safely and in lifting and relaying the tiles above. If you already need scaffold for gutter or fascia work, the job is much cheaper to add on than to do alone.

We cannot give a national price for fitting hip irons or relaying a hip, because no sourced figure exists. For context, MyBuilder's 2026 dry ridge guide quotes £40 to £60 a linear metre, a rough sense of how work along a roof line is measured, while our own figure is agreed once the survey is done. For more on what drives the total, see the guide to ridge repair costs.

If you are tempted to do it yourself, think about where you would be standing. The foot of a hip is at the eaves, with a drop beneath, and the work is awkward at best. Our answer on doing ridge repairs yourself sets out the safety reasons to hand it to someone with the right access.

Every ridge, hip and verge job we take on is listed under ridge and verge repairs, and the survey costs nothing.