The short answer
If a ridge tile has fallen off, keep people away from where it landed and do not climb up. Photograph the gap from the ground and call a roofer to cover it, because rain now has a direct route into the roof. The permanent repair refixes the tile with a clip, bracket or screw alongside the mortar, in line with BS 5534:2014.
Safety first
A ridge tile is a heavy piece of clay or concrete, and it fell from the highest point of the house. There may be others loose beside the gap. Keep children, pets and passers-by clear of the ground underneath, which might be a flagged path, a glazed lean-to or a parked car.
Pick up the fallen tile only if it is safe to reach, and keep it, because it can often be reused. Check what it hit on the way down: a gutter, a lower roof, a greenhouse or a fence can all be damaged. Do not go up a ladder to look. The crown of a roof is a poor place for a householder to be, and whatever loosened one tile may have loosened its neighbours.
If the tile landed in a public place, such as a pavement or a shared access, make the area safe and call us promptly so we can deal with the rest of the run.
Resist the urge to push the tile back into the gap yourself. Without a fresh bed and a fixing it will not stay, and it may fall again on someone.
Temporary cover for the gap
Once a tile is missing, rain can run straight into the open bed and onto the timbers and underlay below. Stopping that water is the first job. A temporary cover is the usual first step: a replacement tile placed loose, or a weatherproof covering secured across the gap until the real repair.
A stopgap is just that. Tarpaulins flap in the wind, and a loose tile can slide again. If rain is on the way and nobody can attend, look into the loft near the ridge and stand a bucket under any drip. Protect what is below with a dust sheet if the ceiling is stained.
Our page on dry verge on an old roof is worth reading if a gable end is also looking tired, because the two often fail together.
Why the tile came off
Most falls are the end of a slow process. The bed shrinks, cracks and lets go, and a gust or a frost finishes it. Older ridges often have nothing but mortar under the tile, which is why one failure can be followed by more. BS 5534:2014 asks for a screw, clip or bracket under each tile on top of the bed, so a ridge laid before that may have no second fixing at all.
Our page on ridge mortar mix explains what the bedding is made of and why it ages. If the neighbouring tiles rock when tested, the repair needs to cover more than the single gap, and that is something only a close look at the whole ridge will settle.
Sometimes the cause is plain bad luck, such as a branch in a storm. More often it is a bed that was already failing.
An old ridge with a patchy record of repointing is the most likely to shed a tile without any warning.
The proper refix
The permanent repair clears the old bed from the gap and from the tiles either side, checks the batten or ridge board underneath, then sets the tile on fresh mortar with a clip, bracket or screw into a timber that will hold it. The ends are pointed and the line is checked by eye along the ridge.
If several tiles are loose, the repair becomes a rebed of that stretch, or a dry-fix ridge along the whole length. A dry-fix system is tested to BS 8612:2018 and has no wet bed to fail. A refix of one or two tiles will sit towards the lower end of the national range: MyBuilder's guide, updated in August 2026, quotes £300 to £600 for the job of re-bedding or replacing ridge tiles. Our notes on dry verge noise cover a separate gable-end issue that sometimes gets mistaken for a ridge fault.
Checking the rest of the ridge
One missing tile is a prompt to check the rest. From the garden, look along the ridge for gaps in the pointing, tiles whose angle differs from the rest, or fresh pale patches where mortar has recently crumbled. A ridge line fails at its weakest joint, and the tiles either side of a failure have usually lost some of their support too.
After a storm, look for tiles that have slipped on the roof slope or on the hips. If a neighbour's roof has lost tiles as well, the cause was probably wind, and the repair can be modest. If yours is the only gap, the cause is more likely a failing bed.
Keep photographs of the damage with the date. They help us plan the repair, and they are useful if you decide to speak to your insurer. Your insurer can tell you what your own policy covers.
Getting it looked at
Photograph the gap from the ground, with a zoom if your phone has one, and send it over by WhatsApp, or attach it to the enquiry form. We survey the ridge, photograph your own roof and give a written quote for only the work that is needed. The 10-year workmanship guarantee on our repairs comes in writing, and we tidy the site and carry all the waste off before we go.
If you cannot tell whether the gap is new or just newly noticed, ring 01793 626096. The pages on dry verge systems and the main ridge and verge page cover the alternatives to mortar, which are worth knowing about before any tile goes back up.