Wet slate and clay tile rooftops with chimney stacks after rain

Roofers in Bishops Cannings

Tile, slate and stone-slate roofs, chimneys and farm buildings are our work in Bishops Cannings, a village of old cottages beside the Kennet and Avon Canal, at the foot of the Marlborough Downs.

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Bishops Cannings' roofs, from spire to towpath

Stone slate roof on an old village church — The church and the old core

St Mary the Virgin, the parish church, dates from the second half of the twelfth century and is listed at Grade I. It is built of ashlar under stone slate roofs, gained its spire in the fifteenth century and was restored in 1883 and 1884. Houses clustered around a building like that tend to be old, and old roofs share habits: heavy coverings on timbers that have moved, ridges and verges bedded in soft mortar, and lead that was laid many repairs ago. Water that gets past any of these usually shows first on a ceiling beside the chimney breast or under a valley, a long way from the real fault. Stone slates are hung in rows that get smaller up the slope, and every repair has to respect that pattern or the new work will look and behave differently from the old. With a Grade I church and other listed buildings in the conservation area, consent questions come up early.

Timber-framed cottage with a central chimney — Thatch, timber frames and central chimneys

The county history describes a pair of seventeenth-century timber-framed cottages at Horton with a thatched roof and a central brick chimney, and the former village school, also thatched, is now a hall. Timber-framed cottages with a central stack bring their own roofing problems. The chimney passes through the ridge, so water finds the gap where brickwork, flaunching and covering meet. Walls of infill panels and old oak react to damp roofs badly, and a small leak can soak a frame for years before a stain shows. We look at stacks, ridges and abutments first, and the photographs we take at the survey point out the exact spot where the weather is getting in.

Brick farm cottage with a lean-to extension — Workers' cottages and farm buildings

Many agricultural workers' cottages here were built in the nineteenth century with the Crown as landlord, and the parish is huge, 8,871 acres, the second largest in Wiltshire, so farms, barns and outbuildings are part of the roofscape too. Cottages of that date tend to have simple pitched roofs, brick chimneys and lean-to additions, and the lean-tos are where leaks start: wall flashings pulled away, gutters at the wrong fall, and low-pitched coverings that were never right for the slope. Barns and stores need different thinking, with sheeting, purlins and fixings that suit the building's use, not the style of a house. Our <a href="/services/commercial-roofing/">commercial roofing</a> page deals with barns, stores and yards.

From Swindon down to the canal and the Downs

Distance: 17 road miles south-south-west of central Swindon
Council: Wiltshire Council
Conservation area: Bishops Cannings, in the village
Landscape: North Wessex Downs National Landscape
Setting: Beside the Kennet and Avon Canal, below the Marlborough Downs

Plain answers for Bishops Cannings roofs

Does the Downs landscape change what roof work is allowed here?

Not for a new roof in matching material. It does limit some bigger changes, dormers among them, so talk to Wiltshire Council before planning an extra room in the loft.

Can a leaking chimney on a Horton-style cottage be fixed without taking it down?

Usually yes. New lead, fresh flaunching and sound pointing cure most leaks at a central stack. Rebuilding is only needed when the brickwork itself has failed.

How do you get materials to a roof down a farm track?

We plan access at the survey: where a lorry can stand, where scaffold goes and how materials are carried, so a narrow lane does not hold up the work.

What are Bishops Cannings roofs made of?

Roofer repointing a stone chimney stack above lead flashing

Brick and limestone cottages around a small village green

The short answer

A mix that follows the village's age. The church wears stone slate over ashlar walls, the Horton cottages have thatch, and the nineteenth-century workers' cottages and farm buildings carry simpler pitched coverings. What a particular house has depends on when it was built and how often it has been re-roofed.

Bishops Cannings spreads along the canal below the Marlborough Downs, and its buildings span eight or nine centuries. The county history gives the clearest guide to what was built when, from the twelfth-century church to the farm cottages that came with the Crown estate.

How is stone slate repaired?

Stone slates are thick pieces of split limestone, hung on oak pegs or nails over battens and laid with the largest stones along the bottom edge and the smallest up at the top. They are heavy, they last for generations and they are happy being repaired a few at a time. The weak points are usually the fixings and the battens beneath, not the stone, and the sound approach is to lift, sort, re-hang and replace only what is broken. Hand-picking a slope this way takes longer than stripping and starting again, and it keeps the character of the roof, which is the point in a village like this.

What about thatch and its neighbours?

Thatched cottages depend on dry brickwork and sound chimney flashing around them, and the thatch itself is only as dry as the stack that rises through it. Where a thatched house sits beside a tiled outbuilding, garage or porch, the junctions between the two are where water collects. We work on the tiled and slate parts of such properties, the chimneys and the abutments, and we explain what we find clearly before anything is priced.

What about plain tile and slate?

Workers' cottages and later houses carry clay or concrete tiles and, in places, slate. Their faults are the familiar ones: slipped tiles, cracked ridge pieces, rusted nails and failed valley linings.

Our roof repairs page covers the faults we meet most often, and the photographs from your own survey show which of them applies to you.

Is a central chimney on an old cottage worth repairing?

The answer

Almost always. A central stack is part of the frame's balance and the main source of warmth in an old cottage, and most leaks come from lead, flaunching or pointing rather than the bricks. A repair that renews those three parts is far cheaper than a rebuild, and it keeps the cottage looking as it does now.

In a timber-framed cottage, the chimney is not a decoration. It stands in the middle of the roof, often wider at the base than at the top, and it rises through the ridge where the covering has to be cut and sealed around it. That junction is hard to keep dry, and over a century or two it is repaired many times.

What goes wrong with a central stack?

The mortar crown on top, known as flaunching, cracks and lets rain run down the flue. The pointing weathers away from the joints, so the bricks take on water and the frost splits their faces. The lead around the base lifts or splits. Any one of those can put damp into the ceiling below, and in a frame of oak and infill that is the beginning of rot in the timbers.

What should be done about it?

We check each part in turn from the roof, photograph it, and recommend the smallest repair that works: renewing the flaunching and cowl, repointing in a lime-based mortar that suits old brick, or fitting new lead flashings. Where a stack has leaned or the brick is crumbling, a partial rebuild is honest advice, and we explain why. Our chimney repairs page sets out each option.

Chimneys on old cottages often serve open fires, and a sound stack is also what stops rain dropping soot and water into a room. If the flue is no longer used, we can fit a ventilated cap so the brickwork inside still dries out.

Our view

Renew the lead, the flaunching and the pointing before thinking about a rebuild.

What does National Landscape status mean for a village roof?

Chimney stack taken down below roof level during removal

Blocked gutter full of leaves overflowing down a brick wall

The short answer

It changes less than people expect. The North Wessex Downs is a National Landscape, and Wiltshire Council makes the planning decisions, while the landscape body only advises. Re-covering a house in what it already has is not usually a planning matter, though some larger changes, such as dormers, are not permitted development here.

Bishops Cannings lies in the North Wessex Downs National Landscape, the name given to former Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty since 22 November 2023. The legal protections are the same as before. The landscape partnership advises, but it has no planning powers of its own, and councils are not obliged to consult it. The decision about any application rests with Wiltshire Council.

What stays easy?

Putting the same covering back on the same roof is not normally a planning matter, and standing in a National Landscape does not change that. Mending chimneys, ridges and gutters with matching materials goes ahead as usual. Questions of building control turn on the proportion of roof renewed and the weight of the new covering, never on the setting. Below 25 per cent of the building envelope and below 50 per cent of the roof, no building control application is normally needed.

What needs a conversation first?

Anything that alters how a building looks, or adds to it, deserves a word with the council first, and the village also has a conservation area. For roof windows or an extra room in the loft, our skylights guidance explains how the planning rules work. A listed house needs listed building consent for any change that touches its character. Buildings in use as Church of England, Roman Catholic, Methodist, Baptist Union or United Reformed churches fall under a separate ecclesiastical exemption, so such a roof is handled through that denomination's own process rather than the council's.

If a job is notifiable, we lay out the Building Regulations route and make the notification, whether through Wiltshire Council's building control team or a registered building control approver, which leaves you with no forms to chase.

MythA National Landscape stops you re-roofing in the same material.

FactRe-covering in matching tiles or slate does not normally need planning permission, wherever the house stands.

Roofing services in Bishops Cannings

Nearby towns we cover

Questions from along the canal

Why do the stone slate roofs in Bishops Cannings slip in places?

The stones usually outlast what holds them. Oak pegs and nails rot or rust, battens soften, and a slate that was once secure drifts down until it falls. Refixing or re-hanging the affected area, with sound battens and new fixings, normally cures it without touching the stone around it.

Can you work on a thatched cottage's chimney and outbuildings?

We can repair the chimney stack, flashings and the tiled or slate parts of the property, including garages, porches and extensions. The survey will show which parts need attention and which are fine, and we will tell you if a fault is better left alone.

Do you cover farms and outlying houses in the parish?

Yes. Bishops Cannings falls inside our 30-road-mile patch, and so do Horton and the farms beyond it. The parish is large, so tell us which lane you are on and we will plan access, parking and deliveries before the survey date. When we finish, nothing is left behind: rubbish goes with us.

Will the canal and downland weather shorten my roof's life?

Nothing in the village sets a fixed lifespan. What matters is how well the roof has been looked after: clear gutters, tidy flashings and a ridge that is sound. A roof near water or trees collects moss and leaves faster, so a yearly look from the ground, and a check after storms, pays for itself.

Ask us about your roof

Tell us what’s happening and we’ll call you back.

Photos of what we find
A written quote
10-year workmanship guarantee

Or call 01793 626096