Roofs in a village that grew around its triangle of roads.
Crawley Down became its own parish in 1862 and has houses of many ages, from a late-16th-century timber-framed house to listed homes. We look at your actual roof before we put a price on it.
Hophurst, a late-16th-century house with square-panelled timber framing, shows how old some buildings here are. On a frame that age we look at the roof timbers and the junction with the walls before we look at the covering.
Old tiled roof over timber walls
East Cottage Farthings is listed Grade II, and Leigh Wood is too. A roof on a listed building is checked against its listing first, so the repair keeps the character the listing protects.
Clay tiles on a country cottage
The village grew over time, so one street can hold roofs of different ages. On every house we note what covers it, how it is fixed down and what the loft looks like, and we do not guess from the road it stands on.
Houses of different ages in a row
Map of Crawley Down and the neighbourhoods around it, with Crawley for reference.
Crawley Down is a village in the north-east of the old parish of Worth, about three miles east of Worth village.
Roofing in Crawley Down: the diary
A village shaped by three roads, the care its listed and older houses need, and who signs off scaffold and approvals once the work grows.
Stage 01 · Background
Crawley Down took shape around three roads and a church, so its houses were not all built together and its roofs are not alike.
The story of Crawley Down is told in its roads. The village grew up on a triangle of roads, with the church standing in the southern angle, and All Saints became the centre of a separate parish in 1862. A 1940 survey of the parish adds two nonconformist chapels, one Countess of Huntingdon and one Methodist, to the village scene. It sits in the north-east of the old parish of Worth and is not one of Crawley's post-war neighbourhoods, so we leave the new-town assumptions about eras at the door.
We begin on the roof itself. The survey takes in the covering, the ridge and hips, the flashings (thin metal strips, often lead, that seal the joint between a roof slope and a chimney or side wall), the timbers you can see from the loft hatch, and the gutters. Photos of your own roof come back to you with the findings, so you can see a cracked tile or a gap in the ridge bedding for yourself. The price that follows is one total in writing, and it covers the repair the survey supports rather than a bigger job we would like to sell.
Looking over a Crawley Down roof
Less than people think. Clay tile is credited with at least 60 years by the Building Research Establishment, yet a specialist writing on conservation calls that number an unreliable guide for old peg tile. Marley quotes around 60 years for concrete tiles, with a warning that the number is no warranty. Natural slate kept in good order is said to last a century and more. So we never date a roof by its age and leave it there. We look at how the tiles sit, whether the nibs that hook them over the battens are intact, and whether the nails and the underlay beneath are still working.
When a few slipped tiles are the whole trouble, mending them costs less, and the survey report makes that plain. Where a whole slope is shedding tiles or the battens have gone soft, renewing that slope makes more sense, and the written price makes clear which case you are in, with the photos beside it. For the everyday jobs, our pitched roofing page shows how we deal with tiles, battens and underlay.
Stage 02 · Older homes
Some Crawley Down houses are listed or very old, and on those the order of work matters as much as the repair itself.
The National Heritage List names several buildings in and around the village. East Cottage Farthings has been Grade II since 11 May 1983, and Leigh Wood carries the same grade. Hophurst, a late-16th-century house with square-panelled timber framing, is recorded in the Victoria County History. If your home is one of these, or just an older cottage, the roof is part of what makes it special, and the rules around it are tighter.
Under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990, section 7, a listed building may not be altered in any way that would affect its character unless the works are authorised. That is listed building consent, and here it comes from Mid Sussex District Council as the local planning authority. Whether a particular repair touches character depends on the building, so the sensible first step is to put the question to the council's planners before any scaffold is booked. We can describe what we found on the roof and what the repair involves, which gives the council something specific to answer.
Words you may meet
On a listed house, we check the listing before we pick up a tile.
The covering may be handmade clay or an old stone slab, the timbers may be hand-cut, and the walls beneath may move more than a modern wall does. A rule written for new roofs does not always suit them. BS 5534, the code of practice that tiling follows, says in its own scope that its recommendations might not suit some old roofs, particularly where traditional or reclaimed materials are in use. So we repair in the way that suits the building. That can mean saving sound tiles for the front slope, matching replacements by size and colour, and bedding a ridge in mortar with mechanical fixings where the building calls for it.
We also look hard at the lead and mortar where the roof meets a chimney or a gable wall, because on an old house that is the usual place for water to find its way in. Our chimney repairs page explains flashings, flaunching (the mortar bed that holds the pots) and repointing in plain terms. If you are unsure whether your home is listed, the council can confirm it, and it is worth knowing before you ask anyone for a price.
Stage 03 · Permissions
Crawley Down answers to Mid Sussex District Council for planning and building control, and to West Sussex County Council for the road.
Most repairs need no paperwork at all. Swapping slipped tiles, rebedding a ridge or fitting a new valley liner keeps the house's appearance unchanged. The rules start to bite when a patch turns into a whole new slope, when a different covering is proposed, or when scaffold has to be erected over the pavement.
Building control for Crawley Down is Mid Sussex District Council's own service, not Crawley's. The Planning Portal sets the national test: you can normally skip a building control application when the work touches under 25 per cent of the total building envelope and under 50 per cent of the roof. Approval does come into play where the new covering weighs 15 per cent or more than the old, or would behave quite differently if fire took hold. A swap from clay to concrete, or the other way round, is a question to settle before the price is fixed, and on weight the Portal points owners towards a structural engineer or surveyor. Put the conservation area question for your road to Mid Sussex District Council. For a change to the roof's appearance, our short post on planning permission for roof work covers the planning side, and the council can confirm it for your address.
Crawley Down survey: what we note
If the frame has to stand on or over the public road or pavement, the highway authority must issue a licence first. On your own drive or garden nothing is needed. West Sussex County Council asks for 10 working days at the least before the frame goes up, and one month of scaffolding costs £266. The application is handled jointly by the scaffolder and Crown, and the start date fits around it. It is worth knowing early, because the ten days start on the day the application goes in. If your house fronts the road with no room on the plot, say so when you send photos, and we plan for that from day one.
Bats are protected by law, and government guidance names roof repair and replacement as activities that can affect them. Should we meet droppings or a roosting bat in the loft or under a tile, the work waits until we have discussed what happens next with you. For a full replacement, our roof replacement page follows the job from stripping to sign-off.
Ask first. Under the 1990 Listed Buildings Act, works that affect a listed building's character need listed building consent. A like-for-like tile swap may not, but that is the council's call, not ours. Mid Sussex District Council's planners can tell you, and our survey photos give them something specific to look at, which speeds up an answer.
The one to rule out is a conservation area, and the Mid Sussex planners can confirm if your address is in one. Ordinary repairs and re-roofs on the same covering are simple either way, though a listed house is a separate matter. If you want to change the look of your roof, put it to Mid Sussex District Council's planners before any price is agreed.
West Sussex County Council wants at least 10 working days' notice between applying and the scaffold going up, so allow for that when you book. A one-month licence is £266, and the fast-track route adds £52. Crown and the scaffolder handle that paperwork between them and time the start to suit, which spares you the form-filling.
Send one wide shot of the slope from the garden or the road, one close shot of the damage, and one of the ceiling inside if there is a stain. Include your postcode and say whether the building appears on the National Heritage List, since that changes who we talk to first. We read those first, then book the survey, and the one written price follows it.
Your postcode, a picture of the troubling slope or ceiling stain and a line about any listing let us book the visit.
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