Roofers in Shipton Bellinger

St Peter's is the Norman parish church of Shipton Bellinger, and the oldest cottages and farmhouses of a Hampshire village are usually found near the church, although each roof tells its own story once we are up on it. Where an older roof carries clay plain tiles or slate on narrow battens, the failures follow a pattern: tile nibs that have snapped, slates that slide as their nails corrode, ridge bedding that has crumbled, and lead flashings split along the folds beside a chimney. Any repair has to respect the pitch and the old rafters. Heavy new tile on an ageing frame is checked before we put a figure in writing.

Many British Army families live in Shipton Bellinger because of the village's closeness to Tidworth Camp and other military facilities, so some households are here for a posting rather than a lifetime. For roofs that has a practical edge. A house may be let, handed over or sold to a date set by someone else, and a fault discovered late is a nuisance for everybody. Concrete interlocking tiles on later housing give years of undemanding service, yet the ridge mortar, the verge cement and the felt beneath age at different speeds from the tiles themselves. A photographed survey gives an owner, a landlord and a buyer the same clear picture of what is up there.

Shipton Bellinger sits on the edge of Salisbury Plain, and the settlement thins out into farmland and open ground. Roofs at the village edge, and on garages, barns and workshops behind the houses, take more weather than roofs sheltered among their neighbours, and the first parts to loosen are the ridges, verges and eaves courses. Outbuildings often carry profiled sheets, felt or an old flat roof that nobody has examined for years. A felt garage roof that has begun to blister, or a lean-to that drips down a wall, costs less to fix early than late. We inspect the whole outbuilding roof, not only the corner that leaks, and say plainly when a patch will hold.