Roofing in Langton Matravers

Purbeck stone is heavy, and worth keeping. The old roofs in the village are Purbeck limestone laid in diminishing courses, biggest stone at the eaves and smallest at the ridge, hung on oak pegs or nails over riven battens with no sarking board and often no underlay at all. Two things follow. The covering is heavy, so before we price anything we look at what is carrying it: rafter feet, purlins and the wall plate. And the stone is worth keeping, so a strip here means every slate coming down, being sorted by size and stacked, then going back on new battens and new fixings with only the broken ones made up. Not everything is stone. There is plain tile and clay tile on the cottages, natural slate on the Victorian work, and concrete interlocking tile on the newer houses at the edges of the village, where the tile outlives the nail or clip and a repair is a fixing job rather than a covering job.

On a roof with no membrane behind the covering water can run a long way down a rafter before it appears, so we work from the loft outwards rather than guessing at the stain. Mortar bedding is the first thing the wind finds: once it cracks the ridge tiles rock and a verge loses its bedding. On the modern tiled roofs we convert to dry ridge and dry verge screwed onto a ventilated roll, the mechanical fixing BS 5534 expects. On a stone roof in the conservation area the ridge is re-bedded in a lime rich mortar that matches what was there. A re-roof less than three kilometres from the sea wants stainless steel nails and clips rather than galvanised, because salt takes the fixing long before it touches the covering.

Chimney flashings, soakers, valleys and abutments in code rated lead, cut so it can move. Stone and lead sit together well, and most of the leaks we chase in the village start at one of those junctions. Rear extensions, garages and porches in felt, GRP fibreglass or EPDM rubber, deck first, then the falls, upstands and outlet. Rainwater goods take a beating here and the brackets go before the gutter does. Thatch we decline: we do the tiled or stone roof beside it and the leadwork at the junction, and leave the thatch to a master thatcher. Insulation, eaves ventilation and condensation cost a fraction to put right while the covering is off, and Approved Document L sets the standard a renovated roof should reach.

The village is strung along one road with stone walls tight to it, so there is often nowhere obvious to stand a lorry or a skip. A stone slate roof also weighs several times what a tiled roof does, so getting it down and away is a real line rather than an afterthought. How long a platform stands matters as much as its size, and the work at height rules are why it is priced rather than optional. Ask whether the scaffold is in the quote, whether battens and membrane are renewed or covered over, and who takes the stone away.