Roofers in Horsham

The town the stone is named after

Horsham stone is a hard sandstone split into thick slabs and laid in diminishing courses, largest at the eaves. On the older buildings around the Causeway and the historic centre it is still doing its job centuries later. It is also enormously heavy, so any work starts with the roof structure rather than the covering: sagging purlins, spread rafters and failed pegs are what we are looking for. Slabs are salvaged and relaid wherever they can be.

No salt at all, and a different set of problems

This far inland corrosion is simply not the issue, and we will say so rather than sell you a coastal specification you have no use for. What the Weald has instead is rainfall, clay, and a great deal of tree cover. Valleys silt up, north slopes stay green, and frost gets into anything already porous and opens it a little further every winter.

A very large modern town around a small old one

Horsham has expanded enormously, and most of the housing is post-war or modern on concrete and clay interlocking tile, built in phases. Whole streets reach the same age at the same time, which means we are often working along a road doing similar jobs — and that we can usually tell you what we expect to find before the ladder comes off the van.