Roofers in Blunsdon

The oldest building in Broad Blunsdon is St Leonard's Church, which dates from the 13th century and was heavily restored by Butterfield in 1870. The council's conservation area appraisal says rubble stone is the usual walling material here, and that stone tiles roof the church, the Manor House, West Hill House, the Old Rectory and Teapot Cottage. Stone tiles are heavy, laid so the stones get smaller as they climb towards the ridge, and held by pegs and battens that usually give out long before the stone does. This smaller part of the conservation area sits wholly on top of the scarp, so these roofs catch weather from every direction, and the fixings at ridges and gable edges carry most of the load.

The appraisal records that only 47 High Street and The Cottage in Chapel Lane still have thatched roofs, and that many original thatched and stone-tiled roofs have since been slated or, more recently, covered in concrete tile. Welsh slate and red brick arrived in the nineteenth century. Each change left its mark. A cottage with a roof pitch built for thatch is steep, so slate sits happily on it, but concrete tile is much heavier than slate and can strain old rafters. When a slate roof here fails, the cause is usually rusted nails, tired lead and old mortar rather than the slates themselves.

Below the scarp, Lower Blunsdon has its own conservation area, designated in 1992, and the wider area has plenty of later housing. Those later roofs have different troubles from the stone ones: ridge bedding that has crumbled, valley linings that have worn, and flat-roofed porches, garages and extensions that age faster than the main slopes. Extensions with flat roofs are especially common on later houses, and they need regular checks at their edges and upstands. A tiled roof from the later twentieth century is not a heritage matter, but it still deserves a careful survey before anyone prices a replacement.