Roofing in Wymondham

Wymondham has grown a great deal while keeping a timber framed and brick historic centre around the abbey. The result is two quite separate kinds of roofing job in one town, listed and near listed property in the middle and large volumes of recent housing around the outside.

In NR18 we do both, and the commuter estates in particular are now reaching the age where the original felt is failing under tiles that still look perfectly good.

A centre rebuilt after 1615

South Norfolk Council's appraisal records a fire in 1615 that destroyed some 300 buildings, which is why so little of the town is older than the seventeenth century. The Market Cross was rebuilt and finished in 1618, and Bridewell Street still has the character of that rebuilding. The appraisal describes most of the roofs in the centre as steeply pitched clay pantile, black and red, with slate and peg tile on the more important buildings. Walls are mostly Norfolk red brick, with some gault and a fair amount of flint.

Black glazed pantile is the one people find hardest to match. The glaze and the colour vary from batch to batch and from maker to maker, and a patch that is slightly too shiny or too brown shows from the street, most of all on a roof whose ridge runs along the line of the road as so many in the centre do. We match with new or reclaimed tile.

Wymondham and The Lizard conservation areas

The historic core has been a conservation area since 1974, with the boundary reviewed several times and last changed in December 2012. The Lizard, the cluster of cottages in the Tiffey valley south east of the town, is a separate conservation area designated in 1994. Both are managed by South Norfolk Council. Changes to the covering, rooflights and chimneys on property in either area can need consent, and a listed building needs listed building consent for most work beyond like for like repair. We check before we price.

Chimneys

The council's appraisal singles out chimneys as an important part of the town's roofscape, on unlisted buildings as well as listed ones. They are also where old roofs let water in first: the flashings and the pointing take weather from every side. Rebuilding or repointing a stack and renewing its lead is usually a better answer than taking it down, and in the conservation area taking it down may not be allowed. A damp patch on a chimney breast is often the first sign.

Where to go next in Wymondham

Our general pages cover what we do here: tiled roofing for pantile and plain tile, chimney repairs for stacks and flashings, new roofs for estate re-covers where the felt has gone, and roof repairs for everything smaller.