Chapter one
Roofs of every age either side of the A24
The village runs from the old common to the station, so we read each roof by its own parts, not its postcode.
Beare Green began as one of the open commons of Capel parish, and its name turns up in the 14th-century court rolls. Today the original village lies east of the A24 dual carriageway, while the larger part, with the shops and the station, sits to the west. Holmwood Station, on the Portsmouth line, opened in Capel parish in 1867. A place with that history was not built in one go, so we never guess a roof from the address. We read what is in front of us.
At a glance
- The old village lies east of the A24
- The shops and station are to the west
- Underlay, nails and battens date a roof better than its street
1.1 What a survey reads
The covering is only the top layer. Under it sit the battens, thin timber strips running across the rafters that the tiles hook onto, then the underlay, the sheet that catches wind-blown water, and beneath that the rafters and the fixings that hold everything down. Old battens go soft where they have stayed damp, and a nail rusted down to a stub no longer holds a tile in place. Underlay from past decades can be brittle, torn or missing. Wherever we can lift a tile, we do, and photograph what lies underneath, because a roof that looks fine from the drive can be hanging on by a handful of sound nails.
1.2 Different ages, different weak points
The table sets out where roofs of different ages tend to give up first. It shows what we look at, not a forecast for any particular house. Lead flashings and valleys deserve attention on all of them, as does the point where the roof meets a chimney. Our roof repairs page explains how we trace a leak from a stain on the ceiling back to the opening, which is seldom directly above it.
1.3 Nothing assumed from the date
A house built generations ago may have been re-roofed since, and a newer one may have been built with a weak spot. We therefore treat the age of a house as a clue, never as the answer, and we say which parts of the roof we could reach and which we could only see from below. The photographs we take of the battens, the underlay and the flashings are the evidence, and you can see exactly what we saw before you decide anything.
Where roofs of different ages tend to fail first
| Roof age | Often weakest | What we check first |
|---|---|---|
| Railway-age and Victorian | Fixings, valley lead, chimney flashings | Nails, battens and lead round the stacks |
| Interwar | Ridge and hip bedding, bay window lead | Ridge fixings and the lead over bays |
| Post-war to the 1970s | Perished felt, rusted fixings, flat-roofed additions | Underlay condition and the flat roof joint |
| More recent | Blocked outlets, loose flashings, unsecured ridge parts | Gutters, flashings and ridge clips |
