Roofing in North Walsham

North Walsham is a market town with a mixed roofscape, older pantile and slate in the centre and a good deal of estate housing added since the war. It is well placed for the north east of the county and we cover the surrounding villages from here as readily as the town itself.

In NR28 the regular work is re-covers on houses now fifty or sixty years old, plus chimney and lead repair on the older stock nearer the market place.

A town rebuilt after 1600

On 25 June 1600 a fire destroyed much of North Walsham, and the centre was rebuilt on its medieval street plan. The district council's conservation area appraisal notes that the earliest surviving houses around the Market Place date from the 17th century and tend to have steeper roofs than later ones, a sign that some were probably thatched at first. Pantile could be laid at a shallower pitch, and at least one house in the Market Place has had its roof line changed.

From the 18th century brick took over, and many older houses were given new Georgian fronts. The railway arrived in 1874, and the side streets filled with late Victorian houses, some in slate and some in red pin tile. Black glazed pantile appears on some of the older Paston College buildings, and Kett's House on Mundesley Road is the only early building in the town that still has a thatched roof.

What that means on the roof

Behind a smart Georgian front there is often an older, steeper roof, with tall chimney stacks and lead where the pitches meet. Those stacks take weather from every side and are the first thing we check. On the Victorian streets the slate usually outlives its nails, and on the post-war estates it is the felt under the tiles that fails first.

Where an old roof has been re-covered more than once, we often find layers of earlier repairs: cement fillets where lead should be, tiles bedded on mortar, and battens nailed over rotten ones.

The conservation area

The historic centre is the North Walsham Conservation Area, managed by North Norfolk District Council. If your house is inside it, or listed, changes to the covering or chimneys may need consent. We check at survey and tell you before anything is ordered.

Where to go next

See chimney repairs for stacks, pots and flashings, tiled roofing for pantile and plain tile, and new roofs for estate re-covers. A damp mark beside the fireplace is covered in our note on a damp patch on a chimney breast.