Roofers in Exeter

Exeter's older housing is a ring of suburbs that were villages or Victorian developments in their own right, and the city council treats many of them as conservation areas: St Leonard's, Pennsylvania and Mont le Grand were built as Georgian and Victorian suburbs; Heavitree, Alphington, Exwick and Cowick Street were villages first; St David's, St Sidwell's, Southernhay and the Friars, Longbrook and the riverside quay each have their own. The roofs in these areas are slate, often on tall houses now divided into flats, with valleys, parapets, dormers and lead detail from the nineteenth century. Newtown, St Thomas and Heavitree are the terraces, brick and slate with shared chimney stacks and back additions.

The twentieth century added the semis of Pinhoe, Whipton, Countess Wear and Heavitree's outer roads, the post-war estates at Wonford and Beacon Heath, and the university's growth turned Pennsylvania and Duryard into a mix of family homes and student lets whose landlords need roofs looked after between tenancies. The newest Exeter is Newcourt, Monkerton and Cranbrook beyond the boundary: modern trussed roofs that need little yet.

Exeter is a few miles from the sea, so salt is less of an enemy here than on the coast, but the rain is Devon rain and the wind comes up the Exe valley from the estuary. The city's hills matter more: Pennsylvania and St Leonard's are steep, the older roofs are big, and a tall Victorian house on a slope has a roof nobody has looked at properly in years because looking at it means a scaffold. Moss on the north slopes, blocked valleys under trees, and cast-iron gutters that have rusted through at the joints are the common calls.

A lot of Exeter's older roofs are shared: a house of four flats, a student let with an agent, a terrace with a party stack. We quote for the whole roof, split the cost where the owners agree, and photograph every stage so an owner or a landlord who is not there can see what was done. Exeter City Council's conservation areas cover most of the Victorian suburbs; repairs in matching slate are normally fine, rooflights and changes of material on visible slopes need checking first.

The whole city: St Leonard's, Heavitree, Pennsylvania, Newtown, St Thomas, Alphington, Exwick, St David's, Pinhoe, Whipton, Countess Wear, Wonford, Beacon Heath, Newcourt and Monkerton, with Topsham, Exminster, Ide and Cranbrook covered from here. Exmouth, down the estuary, is written up separately.