Roofers covering Berkshire
from Maidenhead to Reading
and the Thames valley

Windsor, Maidenhead and the older parts of Reading and Newbury all have Georgian and Victorian buildings with hand-formed lead valleys, parapet gutters and chimney flashings. After a century or more of thermal movement, that lead splits at the folds and fixings, and the damage is rarely visible from ground level.

We regularly find previous patch repairs done with mastic or bitumen paint, which holds for a season before failing worse than before, because the water becomes trapped against the timber underneath. The proper fix is to strip the failed section and re-form it in correctly sized lead.

The interwar and post-war housing that makes up so much of Slough, Reading, Bracknell and parts of Wokingham was finished with sand-and-cement bedded ridge and hip tiles. That mortar has a working life, and across these estates a large proportion of it is now cracked, hollow or missing.

The warning signs are mortar debris in the gutter, a visibly shifted ridge tile, or damp appearing high in a bedroom ceiling. Left alone, wind gets under the tile and you have both water ingress and a safety risk over whatever sits below.

A lot of Berkshire: Maidenhead, Windsor, Reading and the smaller riverside settlements between them, sits low relative to the Thames and its tributaries. Humidity and mature tree cover keep roof surfaces damp for long stretches of the year, which encourages moss and algae growth well beyond what you would expect from the roof's age.

That growth traps moisture against slate and tile, accelerates frost damage, and blocks valleys and gutters with debris. Regular maintenance and clearance is often the most cost-effective work a roof in these towns can have done.

Slough, Reading and Bracknell in particular carry a lot of flat roofing: on retail units, light-industrial buildings, garages and rear extensions built through the 1960s to 1990s. Many of these are on a second or third patch repair by the time we see them.

Once the deck beneath a flat roof has gone soft, overlaying it is a false economy. We take these back to sound structure, correct the falls, and detail the upstands and outlets properly so water actually leaves the roof rather than pooling on it.

Windsor's old town, parts of Maidenhead, Newbury and several of the county's villages fall within conservation areas, and a number of buildings are individually listed. That limits what materials can go back on: natural slate rather than fibre cement, clay tile rather than concrete, sand-cast lead rather than a modern substitute.

We work in those materials as standard practice, and we tell clients before quoting if their property is likely to need planning or listed building consent, so there are no surprises partway through a job.

The more open ground around Newbury, Ascot and the county's western and southern edges takes a harder hit from winter storms than the sheltered streets of the older towns. Verges, ridges and flat roof coverings are usually the first casualties.

After a storm, the priority anywhere in the county is making the building watertight and documenting the damage properly. Our photographic reports are written so they can be passed straight to an insurer, without us making any claim about what a specific policy covers.