Roofers in St Ives

Roofers who understand a St Ives roof

St Ives is a riverside market town on the Great Ouse, and the thing everybody pictures is the medieval bridge with its chapel standing halfway across. Behind it sits a historic core protected as a conservation area, with Georgian and Victorian frontages running along the Quay and Bridge Street. Handsome buildings, and demanding ones from a roofing point of view.

Look up along those frontages and you can read the work off the roofline. Slate and clay pantile, laid on pitches that were set long before anyone thought about modern fixings. Chimney stacks packed close together, several to a terrace, each one relying on lead flashing and soakers to keep water out where the brick meets the tile. Very little of that seals itself. It seals because the lead is sound and the pointing is holding, and once either gives way the water is inside within a season.

Being on the river shapes the rest of it. Property sitting close to the Great Ouse holds moisture the way inland houses simply do not, so the shaded slopes go green quickly, gutters silt up with what washes down off them, and mortar joints stay wet long enough to soften. Push out past the historic streets and the land opens up into flat fields, which is where the wind comes from. Nothing slows it, so it goes looking for the pantile that has slipped a fraction, the ridge that has lifted at one end and the flashing that has already come loose.

What a St Ives roof usually needs

More often than not, the fault is at a junction rather than in the middle of a slope. Around a stack, along a valley, where a lower roof meets a wall. That is where leadwork lives, and leadwork is what wears out first on the older St Ives properties. We take on chimney repairs, repointing and new lead soakers as a proper rebuild of the detail, not another lick of sealant over a split. Our roof repairs handle the rest: slipped and missing pantiles or slates, failed valleys, worn flashing and leaks that have started to show inside.

In a conservation area, what goes back on matters as much as the workmanship. We match slate and clay pantile so a repair reads as part of the roof rather than a patch, and if a job looks like it needs consent we say so before anything starts. Where a roof is genuinely finished we fit new roofs and re-roofs in tile and slate, with breathable membrane underneath and fixings suited to an exposed, wind-driven pitch.

Behind the older frontages there are rear extensions, outriggers and dormers, and most carry a flat roof of some description. Our flat roofing uses fibreglass and EPDM rubber, both of which cope far better with standing water than the felt they usually replace. We fit uPVC fascias, soffits and guttering where the timber behind has started to soften, and roof cleaning earns its keep in St Ives more than in most towns, because moss on a damp riverside slope blocks gutters and holds water against the tile.

However big or small the job, the process is the same. Mark comes out, looks over the roof, gets into the loft where he can, and tells you plainly what he has found. You get a fair price in writing that holds for thirty days, so there is time to think it through or compare it. If a repair will genuinely do, we quote for the repair. You can read more about how we work, or get in touch for a free quote.