Chapter one
Hotham's brick town and its conservation areas
Three conservation areas cover parts of town, so a repair starts with finding out what the roof is and what rules sit over it.
Bognor's history, says the Victoria County History, practically begins with Sir Richard Hotham, a London hatter who enlarged a farmhouse as Bognor Lodge in 1797 and died two years later. He built a number of good houses and set up local brick-works to supply them, so brick is the resort's founding material. Arun lists three conservation areas in Bognor Regis: The Steyne, Hotham Park and Railway Station. What sits on top of an old brick house varies from one address to the next, because two centuries of repair mean the covering may be clay, slate or something much newer. We identify it on the survey instead of assuming. Brick walls are hardwearing, but the roof edge above them is not. Where an old wall rises as a gable or parapet, the junction with the slope deserves a good look, because rainwater runs down the wall face and arrives at the same spot every time.
At a glance
- Hotham set up local brick-works to build his houses
- Arun lists three conservation areas in Bognor Regis
- Arun names Article 4 directions for one address only
1.1 Where an old brick house lets water in
On a brick house the usual entry points are the places where the roof meets something else: the chimney stack, a gable verge, a bay window roof, a valley. Pointing between old bricks weathers back over the decades, and the flashing, the lead strip that seals roof to wall, depends on a sound joint to be dressed into. We check the pointing beside every flashing and at the top courses of each stack. A damp patch under a stack is far more often a stack problem than a tile one, and we trace it before any figure is written down.
1.2 Churches, listing and consent
Two of the town's churches show how local material changed. St John the Baptist on London Road, consecrated in 1886, is flint with red brick dressings, and St Wilfrid's of 1910 is Kentish rag stone. The table below sets out how roof consent works for listed churches. For a house, ask Arun's planning team whether it is listed or in one of the three areas before the covering changes; the council's conservation page names Article 4 directions for Craigweil House in Aldwick and nowhere else. Repairs in matching materials seldom need an application. Roof windows and dormers are covered in our roof planning permission guide.
Consent routes for listed churches and monuments
| Building | Route for roof works |
|---|---|
| Church of England church in use | The Church's own faculty process, under the ecclesiastical exemption |
| Roman Catholic church in use | The denomination's own approval procedure |
| Methodist, Baptist or United Reformed church in use | The denomination's own approval process |
| Closed or redundant church | Listed building consent from the planning authority |
| Scheduled monument | Scheduled monument consent from the Secretary of State |
