Roofers covering
Hampshire
for slate, tile and lead

The older villages around Odiham, Hartley Wintney and Alton have a good number of flint-and-brick properties, often standing close to thatched neighbours, where the roof's weak points are the lead valleys, chimney flashings and abutments rather than the covering itself. Hand-formed lead on these buildings ages the same way it does anywhere else, splitting at the folds after decades of movement.

Because these properties are often in conservation settings, patching with mastic or mortar is both a poor technical fix and visually wrong. We strip failed lead back to sound timber and re-form the detail properly, sized and clipped to allow for expansion, in a finish that suits the building rather than standing out against it.

Basingstoke grew enormously from the 1960s onward, and the resulting streets of concrete interlocking tiles were almost universally finished with sand-and-cement bedded ridges and hips. Decades on, a large proportion of that mortar is now cracked, loose or missing entirely across these estates.

The warning signs are mortar debris in the gutters, a ridge tile sitting visibly out of line, or a damp patch appearing high on an upstairs ceiling. Left unaddressed, wind gets under the tile and lifts it, turning a maintenance job into a safety issue over a driveway or path below.

Much of the chalk downland around Odiham and Alton is open and exposed compared with a sheltered town street, and roofs on these plots take a heavier battering in winter storms. Verge tiles, ridge cappings and slipped slates are a routine finding after a bad night's weather.

Older clay plain tiles in particular can be brittle after decades of frost cycles, and a single slipped tile is often a sign that its neighbours are close behind. We check the wider roof slope, not just the obvious gap, before quoting a repair.

A number of Hampshire villages in our coverage area sit within conservation areas, and some individual properties are listed, particularly where thatch, flint or timber-framed construction survives close by. That restricts materials: natural slate rather than fibre cement, clay rather than concrete, sand-cast lead rather than a modern alternative.

We work in these materials as standard, and we will flag before quoting if your property is likely to need consent, so you are not left mid-job with a planning problem to resolve.

The extensions and garages built alongside Basingstoke's post-war housing boom are now well past the design life of their original flat roof coverings. Many have already had one or two patch repairs and are on borrowed time.

Once the deck beneath a flat roof has softened, overlaying it is a false economy. We strip back to sound structure, correct the falls properly, and detail upstands and outlets so water actually clears the roof rather than sitting on it.

Winter storms crossing southern England affect exposed Hampshire sites, open downland plots, farmhouse roofs and estate gable ends, differently to sheltered town streets, and damage can range from a handful of lifted tiles to a stripped verge.

After a storm, the priority is making the building watertight and recording the damage clearly. Our photographic reports are written so you can pass them straight to an insurer, without us making any claim about what a policy will or will not cover.