Roofers in Holt, Wiltshire

Holt has a good spread of older buildings, from Holt Manor in the seventeenth century to The Courts in the early eighteenth, and a parish church, St Katharine's, rebuilt in 1891 with a medieval tower and porch kept. Roofs on houses of that age are rarely uniform. A rear slope may be a century newer than the front, and a stack may have been rebuilt twice, each time in different bricks and mortar.

Q1.1How do you tell old repairs from new faults?

By studying the roof from the loft and from a ladder. Old water marks on rafters show a leak has run for years, while pale new timber beside them shows where someone has already stepped in. Outside, hard cement fillets and mortar smeared across tiles usually mean an earlier patch is now causing damage, because hard cement traps water against softer material beneath and cracks as the roof moves, which is why we favour softer, more flexible mortars on older masonry.

Q1.2Why do tall old chimney stacks give so much trouble?

A tall stack stands in the weather on every face. The mortar goes first, then the flaunching, then the lead. A stack that has leaned a little over the centuries needs to be left leaning, within reason, and held with proper fixings, not rebuilt for the sake of looking tidy. Our chimney repairs page walks through each stage, from repointing to a rebuild.

When we have finished reading a roof, you receive the survey photographs and a written quote setting out our recommendation. If a smaller repair would do, that is the one we propose, and for a listed house we mark which stages need the council's agreement. A good survey of an old roof can take a while, and it is worth that time, because decisions made on the first visit decide how much of the original fabric survives the work.

Holt is in Wiltshire, so the planning authority is Wiltshire Council, and the village has its own conservation area. Much roofing work here involves no application at all, but four situations call for a closer look, and one phone call early on usually settles which of them applies to you.

Q3.1Which thresholds bring Building Regulations into a Holt re-roof?

The Planning Portal sets two tests: affect less than 25 per cent of the total building envelope and less than 50 per cent of the roof, and a building control application is not normally needed. Go past both and approval is required, and the roof insulation may need bringing up to standard. The same page adds that a covering 15 per cent or more heavier needs approval, because the rafters must carry the difference. When a job is notifiable, our office files the notification and explains what the building control body will want to see.

Q3.2What changes in a conservation area or on a listed house?

Planning rules do not catch work that leaves the outside looking the same, so re-covering in the existing material generally goes ahead without an application, even in the village centre. A different material is another matter, and a listed building where the work would affect its character needs listed building consent. We can describe the job in the terms an officer will want, and photograph what is there so the council sees the roof as it stands.

Q3.3Where does the church fit in?

St Katharine's is a parish church within the Church of England, which sends its roof work down the faculty route and not through the council's listed building process. For houses, our roof replacement page looks at the cases where re-covering the whole roof is the sound answer.