Roofers in High Wycombe
for Chiltern hillside
homes and cottages

Downley and the higher ground towards Hazlemere sit on open chalk hillside with little to break the wind before it reaches a roof. Ridge tiles, hip tiles and verges take the brunt of it, and mortar bedding that has slowly cracked over the years finally gives way in a strong autumn or winter gale.

The result is often a scatter of mortar fragments in the gutter and a tile that has visibly lifted or slipped. Left alone, wind gets under the loosened tile and works it further out of place, turning a small repair into a section of roof needing to be stripped and relaid.

The older hamlets folded into High Wycombe's growth still have flint and brick cottages with hand-formed lead at chimneys, valleys and verges. That lead moves with the seasons, and after decades of thermal cycling it splits along fold lines and pulls away from fixings.

These cottages have often been patched with mastic or mortar at some point, which buys a season of dry weather before failing again, usually worse, because water gets trapped behind the patch rather than running off. We strip failed lead back and re-form it properly rather than adding another layer of patch.

Dense woodland and wooded gardens around Downley and Flackwell Heath keep roof surfaces shaded and damp for long stretches of the year. Moss builds up on north-facing slopes, holding water against the tile or slate and accelerating frost damage once temperatures drop.

Autumn leaf fall compounds the problem by blocking valleys and gutters, particularly on older cottages with smaller, more traditional guttering profiles that were never sized for the volume of debris a mature tree can shed in a single season.

The ring of semis and detached houses built through Totteridge, Sands and Hazlemere between the wars typically used clay or concrete interlocking tile on moderately steep pitches, with mortar-bedded ridges and simple cut valleys. Decades on, a lot of that original bedding is cracked or hollow.

These roofs also tend to have modest chimney stacks serving now-unused fireplaces, and the flashing around them is a common point of failure once the mortar fillet that was often used instead of proper lead finally cracks through.

Many of High Wycombe's older cottages have been extended over the years, sometimes more than once, and the roof junctions where an extension meets the original structure are where we find most leaks. Sloping plots make these junctions more complex than on flat ground, since roof pitches and levels rarely line up neatly.

Flat-roofed extensions built decades ago on the back of older cottages are frequently at or beyond the end of their working life. Where the deck underneath has gone soft, overlaying is a waste of money; we take it back to sound structure and detail the falls and upstands properly.

Steeper roof pitches shed water quickly, which is good for keeping tiles dry but puts more pressure on gutters and valleys to cope with a sudden volume of run-off, especially during heavy Chiltern downpours after dry spells.

Once a valley or gutter is even partially blocked, that volume of water backs up and finds its way under tile courses or over the back of a gutter, causing damp that often shows up well away from the actual blockage.