Roofers in Newton Abbot

The railway works built Newton Abbot, and the streets of terraces around the station and Queen Street date from it: Victorian brick and stone, slate roofs, back additions with lean-to roofs, and chimney stacks shared between neighbours. Wolborough Hill and Forde Park are the town's grander Victorian and Edwardian houses, both now conservation areas, with large slate roofs, dormers, bay roofs and lead detail that has had a century of weather. The town centre around St Leonard's Tower is a conservation area too.

After the war the town spread onto the hills: Milber, Buckland, Decoy and Highweek are 1950s to 1970s estates with hipped concrete-tile roofs and, in Buckland, a good many flat-roofed garages. Houghton Barton and the estates along the A380 are the newest, trussed roofs and interlocking tiles that are only now starting to need attention at ridges and verges.

Newton Abbot escapes the salt that eats slate nails on the coast, but not the rain or the wind. The town sits in the valley of the Lemon at the head of the Teign estuary and the south-westerlies come up the estuary and over Wolborough Hill with plenty of force. Moss is the constant here: the valley is damp, the older roofs face every way, and a north slope under trees stays green all year, which holds water on the tiles and blocks gutters twice a season.

Terraces around the station are reached from the pavement or the back lane, and the hills at Wolborough and Forde Park have the drives and gardens to take a scaffold. Teignbridge Council lists Newton Abbot Town Centre, Wolborough Hill and Forde Park as conservation areas, and in those a change of material or a new dormer needs checking before work starts. A like-for-like slate repair does not.

Newton Abbot, Wolborough, Forde Park, Milber, Buckland, Decoy, Highweek, Bradley, Houghton Barton, Abbotskerswell, Ipplepen, Kingskerswell, Ogwell, Bovey Tracey and Chudleigh. Kingsteignton, across the river, is written up on a page of its own.