Roofers in Plymstock

Hooe, Turnchapel and Oreston are the old part, small waterside settlements on Hooe Lake and the Cattewater. Turnchapel is a conservation area, tight and steep and close to the water, and its listed Boringdon Terrace, early nineteenth century and stuccoed, still has natural slate on some of its roofs and asbestos-cement slate where the rest was replaced. That replacement turns up on older roofs right across this side of the city, and it needs identifying before a roof is stripped. Most of Plymstock is newer. It was a rural parish until the twentieth century, grew quickly either side of the Second World War as somewhere to live for people working in the city, and joined Plymouth in 1967. Elburton, Goosewell, Staddiscombe, Pomphlett and Billacombe are mostly semis, bungalows and short terraces from those decades, many with flat-roofed extensions added since. Bungalows have long, low roofs that take the weather right across their width.

Turnchapel and Mount Batten face straight out across the Sound; the Mount Batten isthmus was breached by the sea in the 1630s and only settled once the breakwaters were built. Salt and wind work the mortar out of ridges and verges on this side faster than in the sheltered parts of the city, and a bungalow ridge that has never been dry-fixed is usually the first thing to go.

On the estates, wide roads and drives make scaffold simple. In Turnchapel and the older parts of Hooe and Oreston the streets are narrow and steep, so we look at access on the free roof check and build it into the price rather than finding it out on the day. Turnchapel has been a conservation area since 1977, so a change of roof material there needs checking with the council first.

Plymstock, Hooe, Turnchapel, Oreston, Mount Batten, Pomphlett, Billacombe, Elburton, Goosewell and Staddiscombe, with Brixton and Yealmpton covered from here. Wembury, to the south, has its own page.