Roofers in Kettering

Kettering roofs were built for the boot and shoe trade

Kettering grew on footwear, and the housing shows it. When the factories expanded in the late 1800s the town threw up long, tightly packed rows of workers' terraces, and those rows still set the pattern for roofing work here. Local ironstone and red brick below, natural slate above, a party chimney stack shared with the house next door, and a valley gutter running down between one roof slope and the next. Ring the town and you get the other half of the picture: substantial post-war and modern estates, concrete interlocking tile, roofs now well into middle age.

Big Red Roofing travel out from Wisbech to work in Kettering, so we come to the town as roofers rather than as neighbours. What we bring is the part that decides whether a quote is any good: we know what these roofs are made of, how they fail, and what a repair on a shared terrace roof involves before anyone puts a ladder up.

What a Kettering roof usually needs

On the slate terraces, four things account for most of the work. Slates slip because the nails holding them have rusted through, so the roof gives up a course at a time rather than all at once. The lead in the valley between you and next door splits along a fold and lets water track into the ceiling below. The flashing where the party stack passes through the slope wears back. And the stack itself, tall, exposed and pointed a century ago, starts shedding mortar. Our roof repairs deal with all of it, and we look for the actual entry point rather than guessing at the wet patch. On a terrace that matters, because water gets in above one house and comes out under another.

Where a slate roof has lost too much to keep patching, we fit full new roofs and re-roofs, matching the covering to the street and bringing the build-up up to date with a breathable membrane and proper fixings underneath. The rear kitchen extensions, bays and garages that came later are covered by our flat roofing in fibreglass and EPDM rubber. Kettering's shared stacks keep us busy with chimney repairs, repointing and fresh leadwork. Out on the estates, where fascias and soffits are original timber and long past it, we fit uPVC fascias, soffits and guttering. And on the shaded northern slopes that green over every winter, our roof cleaning clears the moss before it blocks the gutters.

One thing worth knowing about terraced streets: access shapes the job. Narrow frontages, parked cars and a shared boundary decide where scaffolding can stand and how long the roof is open, so we settle that when we come out and build it into the price. You get a written quote, held for 30 days, and if a repair will see you right we will quote the repair. Read more about how we work, or get in touch for a free quote.