Roofing in Brockenhurst

Slate work. A quarter of Brockenhurst predates 1919 and the largest single cohort went up before 1900. The Victorian and Edwardian houses run natural slate on battens, generally with no sarking board behind, so the whole covering hangs on two nails per slate. When those nails corrode the slates slip one after another, and re-hooking them with tingles is a holding measure rather than a repair. We replace slipped, cracked and missing slate with a matched size, and where a slope has gone past saving we strip it and relay it. Old slate that is sound gets sorted and reused on the elevation facing the road.

Plain clay tile, handmade and machine made peg and nib, sits on the cottages and the tile hung elevations. It is laid to a much steeper pitch than a modern roof and fails at the same places every time: the verge, the valley and the courses immediately under the ridge. The post-war houses on the edge of the village carry concrete interlocking tile, where the covering is usually sound and the mortar bedding, the verge and the underlay are not. Those get ridge and verge screwed down as a dry fix system under BS 5534 rather than re-bedded in mortar that will crack again. The most exposed elevation faces south west, and wind and driven rain work at those edges rather than at the middle of a slope.

Thatch, which we do not touch. There is thatch in and around the village and it belongs to a master thatcher. Where a tiled or slated section abuts a thatched one we will do the tiling, the battens and the leadwork up to the junction and leave the thatch alone. Anyone offering to do both is worth a second look.

Under any of it sit the battens, the underlay and the rafter feet. On a roof of this age the felt is either perished or absent, batten ends have softened at the eaves and the wall plate, and the nails have rusted to nothing. A strip and re-cover puts breathable membrane and treated battens back under a matched covering, with soft timber cut out first. Leadwork is the bulk of our repair work in the village: chimney flashings, soakers, secret and open valleys, and the abutments where a rear addition meets the main slope, all in code rated lead cut into bays so it can move without splitting.

Rear additions, dormer tops and garages come in felt, GRP fibreglass or EPDM rubber, and the deck comes first, then the falls, the upstands and the outlet. Cast iron rainwater goods are common here and often worth repairing rather than replacing. Oak and beech overhang a lot of these roofs, so leaf debris fills the gutter and the valley faster than it would on an open estate, and with the Lymington River yards away and flood zone 3 across the village, where that water goes is not a detail. While the covering is off, insulation, eaves ventilation and any condensation problem are far cheaper to sort, and Approved Document L sets the standard a renovated roof is expected to reach. We will talk you out of spray foam every time.

No rate per square metre. Village frontages are tight, the lanes are narrow and stock roams freely, so where a scaffold and a skip can stand is settled before a figure is written down. Material cannot be left on the open forest, and anything loose overnight will be found by a pony. How long a platform stands matters as much as its size, which is why the work at height rules make it a priced line. Chimneys, valleys and abutments are priced one at a time. Ask whether scaffold is in the price and whether battens and membrane are renewed or covered over.

People get this backwards in both directions. It does not stop you repairing your roof. A like for like re-cover on an unlisted house, new rainwater goods, a slipped slate put back, all of it is maintenance and none of it needs an application. What the designation controls is appearance, so the moment the material changes, slate to concrete tile, clay to something that merely looks like clay, it becomes a matter of judgement and the National Park makes it.

The practical effect is that matching is part of the job rather than a nicety. We take a sample off the roof and match size, colour and weathering before ordering, and reclaimed material is often the answer.

One thing catches people out. Every tree in a conservation area is protected: six weeks' written notice to the Authority before cutting one. If the branch shedding leaf into your valley needs taking back, that notice starts well before the scaffold does.