Beacon Basingstoke Roofing

Roofers in Old Basing

Old Basing is 3.2 road miles east of Basingstoke, a river village beside the Loddon where the ruins of Basing House gave the brick for many 17th-century buildings. Its roofs are plain clay tile, slate on small red-brick cottages and a few thatches. We survey each with photographs of the actual roof and follow with a written quote that does not change.

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1930s semi-detached houses with hipped clay tile roofs and bay windows on a suburban road

Roofs we see in Old Basing

  • Brick chimney stack with clay pots

    Plain clay tile by the church

    The council's appraisal of the church area says plain handmade clay tiles are generally used on the older buildings, with several houses on The Street still thatched. A plain tile roof is a double-lapped surface of small tiles, so any one of them can be lifted out and replaced. That makes repair by patching the normal route, using reclaimed tiles to match, rather than a stripped and renewed roof.

  • A Hampshire village cottage of flint and brick with a steep clay plain tile roof

    Slate on small red-brick cottages

    Most 19th-century housing in the village was small red-brick cottages under slate, and the appraisal says slate also went onto later additions to older buildings. Slate roofs of that period are thin and light, with fine detailing at the valleys, eaves and chimneys. The slates tend to outlast their fixings, so slipped slates and rusted nails are the usual story, not a dead roof.

  • 1930s semi-detached houses with hipped clay tile roofs and bay windows on a suburban road

    Brick built from Basing House

    Many 17th-century buildings in Old Basing were built with bricks taken from the ruins of Basing House after the Civil War. Reclaimed brick varies in hardness from one to the next, so the chimney stacks and gable walls on these houses weather unevenly. A roof on this kind of house meets a lot of old masonry, and the leadwork and pointing at those joints decide whether it stays dry.

3.2 road miles east of Basingstoke

Planning and building control in Old Basing

The village is governed by Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council, which designated the Old Basing Conservation Area in 1973 and extended it in 1981. The council's appraisal and management plan is published alongside its other conservation appraisals, and it describes the materials it wants kept: plain clay tile on older buildings, slate on 19th-century ones, thatch on The Street. St Mary's Church and the Great Barn at Grange Farm, which dates from 1535, are both listed at Grade I, and other buildings in the village carry listings too.

Matching repairs in clay tile, slate or lead are normally uncomplicated inside the conservation area. Consent can be required if the covering is swapped for something different, so speak to the council's conservation officer first, and treat a listed house with the same care. Our guides to conservation area roofing rules and to listed building roofs cover the process. A larger re-cover can be notifiable under the Building Regulations, which we handle with the council's building control team or a registered building control approver. Lychpit, the other half of the parish, is covered on its own page.

What we find on Old Basing roofs

Old Basing is old by Hampshire standards: a Norman castle site, a Tudor house and the Civil War all sit behind its buildings. The roofs are younger than that, but many have been repaired and altered several times. They fail in four ways more often than any others: tile detailing at the eaves and hips, slate fixings, softened brick at the chimney, and the damp and shade that come with a river valley. Each is explained below, with the repair we would offer.

Chapter 1: Can the plain clay tile roof on our old cottage near the church be patched rather than stripped?

What we find

Plain tile roofs have a particular way of going wrong. The tiles are small and curved slightly across their width, laid in overlapping courses so that each course covers the joints of the one below. At the eaves the bottom course is doubled up, to tilt the water into the gutter, and along the hips (the sloping external angles) special bonnet tiles, or lead, close the join. These are the parts that move and crack first, because they carry the most water and the most wind.

You can see the trouble from the lane: a tile out of line, a dark gap in the eaves course, or a hip that has opened along its length. Inside the loft, a lit pinhole along a rafter shows where a tile has cracked or shifted. Because the tiles are small, one broken tile causes a leak of its own size, which makes the fault easy to miss until the plaster stains.

What we fix

In most cases patching is the right answer and a full strip is not. We lift the affected courses, replace cracked tiles with reclaimed ones of the same colour and camber, and renew any batten that has softened. New fixings go in where old nails have rusted, and the eaves and hip details are reset so they shed water properly. Sound tiles are kept and relaid, which also keeps the roof looking like part of the village.

If the roof has lost its underlay or a whole slope has dropped, we propose lifting and relaying that section with a breathable membrane below. That work is carried out slope by slope, so the house is never open to the weather for long. Our pitched roofing service covers re-covers, and our team will explain the choice between patching and relaying with your own photographs in hand.

Chapter 2: Slates are sliding off our red-brick Old Basing cottage. Is the roof finished?

What we find

It usually is not. A Victorian cottage slate is made of a dense stone that outlives most of the other materials on the roof. What fails is the thin metal that holds it, because the nails rust where the slate head is damp for most of the year. Once the nail goes, the slate slides, and the one above it takes the extra load. A run of slipped slates down one slope is a sign that the nails are failing right across it.

The slates are often laid over timber battens on a cottage with no underlay at all, so there is little to stop water reaching the rafters. Valleys, where two slopes meet in a lead-lined channel, are another weak point, as are the flashings round the chimney. A damp patch on an upstairs ceiling, or slates piled in the back yard after a gale, tells you where to look. Gutters in cast iron or old plastic often clog beneath the same slope.

What we fix

If the slates are intact, we strip the failing slope, set aside each good slate, fit new breathable underlay where there was none and re-fix the slates with copper or stainless nails. New slate fills the gaps, matched to the old in size and shade. Valleys and flashings are re-lined in lead at the same visit, because opening the roof is the cheapest moment to do that. If most of the slates are laminating or cracking, we say so and compare natural and man-made slate.

UK guides report £120 to £180 per square metre for a natural slate re-roof and £90 to £130 for man-made slate, as typical ranges, with a single slate repair at £100 to £250 in labour. Your fixed quote follows the survey. Our slate roofing page explains the materials in more detail.

Chapter 3: The chimney on our 17th-century house in Old Basing has crumbling brick. Is it safe to repair?

What we find

Bricks salvaged from Basing House were reused in many houses of the period, and reclaimed brick is not uniform. Some have been fired hard, some are soft and porous, and they take up water differently. On a chimney stack, which stands in the wind and sun above the roof, the soft ones lose their faces in frost and the mortar between them washes out. A crumbling face is called spalling, and once the hard skin has gone the brick behind it decays faster.

At the base of the stack, the lead flashing seals the join with the roof, and at the top the flaunching, a sloping bed of mortar, holds the pots in place and sheds the rain. When either fails, the water runs down inside the flue and the breast. The signs are a damp chimney breast, a ceiling stain beside the stack, or loose pieces of brick and mortar found on the roof or in the gutter.

What we fix

A damaged stack can usually be saved. We examine it from above, photograph each course and joint, and separate the bricks that are sound from those that are spalling. Pointing is raked out and redone in lime mortar, which is softer than cement and lets the old brick breathe, where a hard cement mix would trap water and break the faces. Badly eroded bricks are cut out and replaced with reclaimed ones of similar hardness.

The flashing and soakers, small lead pieces stepped up each side of the stack, are renewed, and the flaunching is remade with a drip so water falls clear. If the stack leans or has lost its footing, we recommend taking it down and rebuilding it to the original profile. Reported UK prices for repointing a chimney span £450 to £1,200; your fixed quote follows the survey. More is on the chimney repairs page.

Chapter 4: Moss and slimy gutters keep returning on our roof near the Loddon. What is going on?

What we find

A house beside a river sits in damper air than one on a hill, and the trees along the Loddon cast shade and drop leaves into the gutters. A roof slope that stays damp is a home for moss and algae, which grip the surface and hold water against it. On clay and slate this does little harm at first. On concrete tiles, found on the more recent additions and extensions, moss packs the overlaps and can lift the edges of the tiles.

The gutters are the second victim. Leaves and moss that wash off the roof gather in the gutter, block the outlet, and the water overflows down the wall. Staining on the brickwork below the eaves, a green streak on the fascia board and tiles that never seem dry are the signs. A timber fascia or soffit that stays wet for years will also start to rot.

What we fix

We clear the moss by hand and apply biocide to what remains, which kills what remains and slows regrowth. We avoid pressure washing on older tile, because the jet can strip the face from a soft clay or slate and force water under the laps. Gutters and downpipes are cleared, joints checked for leaks, and any rotten fascia board is replaced.

Where trees overhang, a gutter guard or more regular clearing keeps the gutters clear, and a tree surgeon should trim back branches that rub the tiles. The typical UK range reported for moss removal by hand with biocide is £748 to £978 by house size, against £553 to £723 for pressure washing. Further detail sits on the roof cleaning and guttering and roofline pages.

Old Basing roofing questions

My red-brick Victorian cottage in Old Basing has slipped slates. Can they be repaired rather than replaced?

Often, yes. Slates usually slip because the fixings have corroded, not because the slates themselves have failed. If the slates are sound, we re-fix them and replace the individual broken ones, reusing the good slates. If many are laminating or cracking across a slope, re-slating that section is the better use of money. The photographs from the survey show which case yours is.

Do you work on the thatched houses along The Street?

Our work is tile, slate, lead, chimneys and gutters, and that includes the stacks and neighbouring roofs of a thatched house. A thatched roof next door does not change how we repair yours, though we take care with scaffold and keep the work tidy. We also check the stack, since a chimney through a thatch needs particular care.

Does our house in the conservation area need consent for a new roof?

A like-for-like repair usually does not, but a change of material may, and the rule differs for a listed house. We photograph the roof so you can show the council's conservation officer what is there now, and we recommend matching tile or slate. Check with the council before ordering anything.

Lychpit is next door. Do you cover both halves of the parish?

Yes. Old Basing and Lychpit form one parish, and we cover both. The roofs differ: the old village is clay tile, slate and thatch, while Lychpit is a separate part of the parish with its own housing. Our page for Lychpit roofers deals with its roofs separately.

Can bricks from Basing House still be seen on roofs in the village?

They can be seen in walls and chimneys, as the council's appraisal records that many 17th-century buildings reused them. Where we repair those stacks, we keep the original brick wherever it is sound, and replace damaged ones with reclaimed brick of similar hardness. Protected species, bats and nesting birds among them, are another reason we look over an old roof before disturbing it.

Nearby areas

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