Roofing in Loddon

Loddon sits on the Chet in south Norfolk with a Georgian centre and a conservation area running through it. The older property is brick and pantile with steep pitches, and the newer housing around the edges is the usual concrete interlocking tile.

We cover NR14 and the villages around it, and on the protected buildings we will tell you what consent you are likely to need before anything is ordered.

What the roofs are made of

The appraisal for the Loddon and Chedgrave conservation area describes most of the older roofs as steeply pitched red or black clay pantile, with the tile profiles varying from one building to the next. Alongside them are Georgian houses with shallow hipped slate roofs, such as the large detached houses on Beccles Road, and a few Victorian buildings with much steeper slate and parapet gables, including the library on Church Plain. Brick chimneys are prominent all along the main street.

Bridge Street is lined with 18th and 19th century terraced cottages running down to the white weatherboarded mill, which dates from the 1700s.

Church Plain has some of the most varied roofs in the town. The Swan Hotel has Georgian proportions and a modillion eaves cornice, and the former Town Hall is Jacobean in style, in brick and terracotta with Dutch gables. Gables, copings and cornices like these are where water gets in on older buildings, and they need a roofer who will repair the detail rather than cover it with flashing tape or cement.

Matching pantile properly

Because the profiles vary, a single replacement pantile of the wrong shape shows from the street and may not lap properly with its neighbours. On a repair, sound original tile is reused where it can be. On shallow hipped slate roofs the weak points are usually the hips and the lead, not the slate.

Who you deal with for consent

The conservation area was first designated in 1975. Most of it falls under South Norfolk Council, but the land either side of the Chet east of Bridge Street is in the Broads Authority area. Which one handles an application depends on exactly where the house is. We check that at survey and tell you what is needed.

Where to go next

See tiled roofing for pantile, slate roofing for the Georgian and Victorian houses, and chimney repairs for stacks and flashings. If a chimney breast shows a damp mark, read our note on a damp patch on a chimney breast.