Chapter one
Interwar houses along the Chichester road
Houses added in the 1920s and 30s now face the faults of their age, starting with the ridge and the nails under each tile.
Fontwell had about six dwellings in the 1840s, so almost everything you see along the Chichester-Arundel road arrived with the interwar building. The Victoria County History places the new houses further east in the 1920s and 30s, along the road and north of it, and a roof from those decades is now approaching a century old. Age shows in a roof in a few predictable ways. Nails rust through, battens, the thin timber laths each tile hangs from, dry out and split, and any underlay laid beneath the tiles perishes or was never fitted in the first place. None of these can be judged from the pavement, which is why a survey includes the loft.
At a glance
- New houses went up along the road in the 1920s and 30s
- We check ridges, hips and verges first
- BS 5534 now wants fixings alongside any mortar
1.1 What a survey of an interwar roof covers
Most houses of the period have a hipped or gabled roof with a bay or porch roof attached to the front. We count slipped and cracked tiles slope by slope, test whether the tiles around them are still held, and photograph every fault, so you can see each one on your own roof. Bay roofs often have a lead-lined valley or a small flat section that gets less attention than the main slopes, and these are cheap to inspect while the ladder is up. Chimney stacks on houses of this date carry a flaunching, the shaped mortar collar at the foot of each pot, and it cracks with age and lets water in beside the flue. A damp patch on the chimney breast inside is the sign we trace back to it. Wind that lifts one loose ridge tile also exposes the bedding under the next, which is why a small fault on the ridge is worth settling early.
1.2 Ridge, hip and verge fixings
Hips are fixed differently now. A hip tile once sat on a mortar bed with a metal strap at its foot; the current BS 5534 expects each ridge and hip tile to be fixed mechanically as well. Mortar is still used alongside, and a dry-fix system is another route, tested under BS 8612:2018. Where the old ridge tiles are sound we re-set them with those fixings rather than replacing them. Our pitched roofing page describes re-covering a whole roof, for the house where the fixings have failed on every slope.
What a survey of an interwar roof checks
- Ridge We look for lifted or cracked ridge and hip tiles and for gaps in their bedding.
- Slopes Slipped, cracked and loose tiles are counted and photographed slope by slope.
- Loft From inside we check for daylight, damp battens and the state of any underlay.
- Edges Verges, eaves and bay roofs are examined where wind and run-off work hardest.
