Heritage roofs and the jobs other firms won't take on

The roofs other firms quote high to avoid

There’s a kind of roof that gets a polite “we’re a bit booked up” from most local firms. A listed cottage with hand-made clay tiles. A Victorian villa with a natural slate roof and a turret. A church hall with lead valleys longer than a transit van. Steep pitches, awkward access, materials you can’t buy at the local merchant.

We take those on. Three generations of doing it means we’ve already seen most of what a complex roof can throw at us.

We’re not the cheapest. The homeowners who call us about a heritage roof already know that. They’re calling because the last thing they want is a cheap roof on an expensive house.

Natural slate, sorted by hand

A natural slate roof isn’t a pallet of identical tiles. Welsh and Spanish slate is graded by thickness and size, then laid in diminishing courses — thicker, longer slates at the eaves, thinner and shorter as you climb to the ridge. Done right, it looks like it grew there. Done wrong, it looks like a chequerboard.

That sorting takes time. It’s part of why a heritage slate job costs more than a concrete-tile re-roof, and it’s exactly the part a cheap quote skips.

What we do:

• Real natural slate — Welsh, Spanish or to match your existing roof — not fibre-cement imitation, unless you specifically want it and we’ve told you the trade-off.
• Hand-cut valleys and hips, dressed to the pitch.
• Diminishing courses set out and sorted on site.
• Like-for-like clay and stone where the building’s age calls for it.

Certified leadwork that lasts

On a period roof, the lead is where most failures start — and where most cheap quotes cut the corner. Foil flashing and a tube of mastic will pass a glance and fail in two winters.

We have a certified lead welder, trained through the Master Roofers Academy. That means code-rated lead, sized to the run, welded and bossed at valleys, chimney abutments and parapets. Proper lead detailing on a heritage roof should outlast the people who paid for it.

If you’ve got a chimney that needs the same care, that’s our chimneys and leadwork page.

Listed buildings and conservation areas

Working on a listed building or inside a conservation area means matching the original material and the original detail — that’s usually what the consent demands. We work to the spec, match the slate or clay, and photograph every stage so you’ve got a clean record to hand the conservation officer.

If you’re still going through consent, send us the spec and we’ll price against it before anyone’s on the roof.

We photograph every stage

Before-and-after photos on every job we do — heritage work most of all. On a roof you can’t see from the ground, where the detailing is the whole point, photos are how you know the lead was dressed properly and the slate was sorted, not slapped on.

You get the drone survey photos before we quote, and the stage photos as the work goes. Three generations of the same family name on the work means we don’t hide what’s under the slate.

Survey by drone first

Complex roofs are hard to price from the ground, and guessing means either a padded quote or a nasty surprise mid-job. We run a drone survey first — valleys, turrets, ridges, the lot — so the price is based on what’s actually up there. You keep the footage either way.

The honest version

A heritage roof done properly costs more and takes longer than a standard re-roof. Natural slate, hand-cut detailing and certified lead aren’t where you save money. If a quote comes in well under ours, look at what it leaves out — the lead, the real slate, the sorting — because that’s usually the difference, and you’ll meet it again two winters later.

We’re an in-house, fully insured team. We don’t subcontract the skilled work to whoever’s free that week. And we back the job with a 20-year guarantee.

We’re the most-reviewed roofer in Middlewich, and every one of those reviews is five stars — 99 of them on Google.

Next step

Call 01606 537305 — the line is answered 24/7 — or email middlewichroofing@gmail.com with a few photos and the address. We’ll book a drone survey, look at what your roof actually needs, and give you a price based on the real job, not a guess.