Roofers in Wembury

Wembury grew a great deal in the twentieth century, and its housing sits in four settlements: Knighton, about three quarters of a mile inland from the beach and the church, Down Thomas, Heybrook Bay and Wembury Point. The houses run from two-bedroom bungalows to four and five-bedroom houses, with barn conversions among them, many with dormers, flat-roofed extensions and the low, wide roofs bungalows have. The older buildings are slate rubble with slate-hung fronts under steep slate roofs, and here, as round the bay, some of them were re-covered long ago in asbestos-cement slate. Wembury Point was two holiday camps from 1928, was requisitioned in 1940, became the HMS Cambridge gunnery school from 1956 to 2001, and has belonged to the National Trust, with the Mewstone, since 2006. Across the Yealm, Newton Ferrers climbs the valley side from cottages on the shore to bigger early twentieth-century houses and later ones higher up, and Noss Mayo faces it across the creek, slate and stone, with roofs that are hard to reach and well worth looking after.

Wembury sits on the open coast at the mouth of the Sound, with nothing between it and the Channel weather, and the wind arrives full of salt. Ridge mortar cracks and falls out, verges open, dormer cheeks and flat roofs take a beating, and nails in any slate roof rust faster here than almost anywhere else in our area. A dry ridge and dry verge are worth their cost on this coast.

Wembury, Down Thomas, Heybrook Bay and the Yealm villages are all in the South Devon National Landscape, the old Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and South Hams District Council deals with planning. Like-for-like repairs and re-roofs are normally fine; changing the look of a roof, or adding roof windows, is the thing to ask about first, and Newton Ferrers and Noss Mayo each have a conservation area of their own.

Wembury, Knighton, Down Thomas and Heybrook Bay, with Newton Ferrers, Noss Mayo, Membland and Holbeton covered from here. The Plymstock page picks up the road back into the city.