Roof repairs and re-roofing in Great Missenden

Housing in Great Missenden

What the roofs here are like

Great Missenden runs along the Misbourne valley with a historic High Street at its heart, and the roofscape there is period throughout: timber-framed and brick buildings under steep clay tile, a good number of them listed, with the irregular ridge lines and varied heights that come from centuries of piecemeal building. Some have Welsh slate from Victorian re-roofing over much older frames. Away from the High Street the village opens out into Victorian and Edwardian villas, then substantial interwar detached housing on the valley sides, and postwar development on the higher ground towards Prestwood. Large private houses sit in wooded grounds on the slopes above the village, several of them with complex multi-level roofs.

What we get called out for

The problems that come up in Great Missenden

The High Street is a conservation area with a lot of listed property, so work there means matching handmade tile, keeping the existing coursing and generally applying for consent. We would rather tell you that at the quote than halfway through. The older buildings are also structurally irregular - rafters that have moved over two hundred years, ridge lines that are visibly not straight - and the right approach is usually to work with that rather than try to correct it. Valley and abutment leadwork is the recurring failure on these roofs, because there are simply so many junctions. Up on the wooded slopes, moss and gutter blockage dominate instead.

Working in Great Missenden

Access, scaffold and what affects the timescale

The High Street is narrow, busy and largely listed, so working there means a scaffold licence, listed building consent in most cases, and restricted delivery windows - plan on a long lead time. Parking in the village centre is genuinely difficult and we factor that in rather than surprising you with it. Up on the wooded slopes above the village the problem reverses: access drives are long, steep and sometimes unmade, and after heavy rain a scaffold lorry will not always get up them. We will look at the approach as well as the roof when we come to quote, because on some of these properties access is the deciding cost.