Roofs on a chalk hilltop with a Grade I church.
Sanderstead lies high on the chalk, about 550 ft up near All Saints church. Wind, old buildings and Croydon's paperwork all shape a job here, and the survey sorts out which apply.
The Victoria County History puts the ground near the church at about 550 ft above sea level. Wind reaches a hilltop roof first, so we study how the ridge, the verge and each tile edge are held.
Tiled roof ridge against open sky
The aisle roofs at All Saints run in one long sweep from the nave roof, as they did originally. Big plain slopes like that show every dip and slipped tile, which is how we read any large roof.
Long pitched roof slope in tiles
The old rectory-house dates from 1680. A building of that age has met many a repairer, so we establish what is there, match it, and show you our findings before a price is written.
Older brick house with a tiled roof
Map of Sanderstead and the neighbourhoods around it, with Crawley for reference.
Sanderstead is a hilltop village about 3 miles south-east of Croydon, inside the London Borough of Croydon and north of Crawley.
A Sanderstead roof diary
Three brief chapters covering exposure, the old buildings around a Grade I church, and the Croydon rules that start to matter once a repair grows.
Stage 01 · The site
Sanderstead sits high on the chalk, and a roof up there meets the wind before the roofs lower down the slope do.
Climb the road into Sanderstead and you are on a hill. The Victoria County History gives the ground near the church as about 550 ft above sea level, on chalk, with considerable deposits of gravel in the southern part. Its 1912 entry adds that the parish had stayed comparatively rural, because the stations sat on its outskirts. For a roofer the height is the detail that matters. Wind arrives at a roof on high ground sooner and harder than at one in the hollow below. It is wind that chips at ridge tiles, lifts the edge of a verge and finishes off a tile that was already working loose.
Checked on an exposed roof
No rule sets a separate standard for high ground, so there is no formula to apply. There is only the roof itself. We look at how each tile is held, and whether the battens, the timber strips the tiles hook over, are still sound. We look at the ridge (the capped spine of tiles at the crown of the roof) and at the verge, the tiled edge that finishes a gable end. Marley notes that the 2014 revision of BS 5534 made mortar on its own an unreliable fix for ridge and hip tiles, and says every bedded tile should also have a mechanical fixing. A ridge that has stood for decades on mortar alone, in an exposed spot, goes to the top of our checklist, and the photo of it goes to you.
Rain leaves a roof at the bottom edge, so that is where many hidden faults begin. We check the underlay as it dips into the gutter, the fascia (the board the gutter is screwed to), the soffit tucked beneath it and the slope of the run towards the downpipe. A gutter dragging away from a tired fascia can send rain back up under the lowest tiles, and from the lawn that looks like a fault in the roof. The gutters, soffits and fascias page covers the repair.
From there we work up the slope. Refixing a loose verge and swapping a handful of tiles is a different job from a re-cover, and the survey settles which you need. The pitched roofing service explains how we treat tiles and underlay. Where a repair is enough, the written price is for that repair and for nothing larger.
Stage 02 · Heritage
The church was begun about 1230 and the old rectory-house dates from 1680, with several listed buildings close by.
Some of Sanderstead is very old. The History dates the present church to about 1230 and observes that the aisle roofs continue in one long sweep from the nave roof, just as they did at the start. The Church of All Saints carries a Grade I listing, entry 1079341, dated 20 May 1954 when it was first listed. Close by, 9 to 12 Doble Court and the war memorial are both Grade II. The old rectory-house goes back to 1680.
Worship carries on at All Saints under the Church of England, which holds exempt status. So a roof repair there is approved inside the Church's own system, a faculty, instead of by the council's listed building consent. The parish and the diocese make that call, and a roofer works to whatever scheme they approve. It shows how much the paperwork can differ between one old building and the next, even on the same hill, and it is why we never assume that the rules for one roof carry over to another.
A listing alters what counts as a simple repair. New tiles of the same kind, laid to the same pattern, are one matter. A different covering, a changed ridge detail or new lead around a chimney can alter the character of the building, and that calls for listed building consent from the council before work begins. The extra step protects the building, and asking first costs far less than undoing a job. Our answer on re-roofing a listed building walks through the order of events.
Not sure whether your home is listed? Croydon's planning team can tell you, and the national list of heritage buildings has an address search of its own. An old roof is not automatically listed, and a listed roof is not off limits to repair. Guessing wrong in either direction is how jobs get done twice.
Heritage words worth knowing
At the survey we note the details a conservation officer would ask about: the tile size, how the courses are spaced and how the ridge is finished. Those photos come to you, ready to forward to the council. On a house as old as the 1680 rectory-house, we also study the roof timbers from the loft wherever we can reach them, because earlier repairs sometimes sit hidden beneath a newer covering. You are told what we could see, and what we could not.
Stage 03 · Permissions
Sanderstead falls under the London Borough of Croydon, which runs planning and building control itself, so most questions have one address.
Swapping tiles like for like asks nothing of the council. Questions only start when a repair stretches to a whole new covering, when the material itself is set to change, or when the scaffold has no choice but to use the road. Sanderstead belongs to the London Borough of Croydon, and the Greater London Authority sits one level higher. Croydon runs its own building control team. The planning.data.gov.uk conservation area dataset shows nothing mapped at Sanderstead, so a plain re-roof here does not raise a conservation question, although a listed house is another matter.
The Planning Portal gives the national test, and it has two limbs. Building control approval is normally unnecessary when less than 25 per cent of the total building envelope is affected and, as a second condition, under half the roof is touched. Approval is required for a new covering that adds 15 per cent or more to the weight, and for one whose fire performance would be significantly different from the old one. If the survey leans towards stripping the lot, Croydon's building control team gets our question first, and whatever they answer is written into the price. A full replacement is laid out step by step on the roof replacement page, from survey through to handover.
Sanderstead permissions at a glance
Poles and boards on the pavement or carriageway count as highway scaffolding, and that calls for a licence from the authority that looks after the road. For Sanderstead the authority is the borough itself. Croydon's published terms give a one month minimum and a fee of £488 per four weeks for each elevation. They also ask for a refundable bond of £50 per square metre of enclosed highway, and no licence reaches you until the council has been out to see the site. Our scaffolder and we handle that licence as a pair, and if another firm quotes you, ask them who applies. Where the drive or front garden has space, the scaffold goes on your own ground, and Croydon states plainly that nobody needs a licence or consent to put scaffolding on private land.
Any loft can hold a roost, and the legal protection GOV.UK describes for bats extends to roof repair and replacement. Should anything at the survey hint at bats, the job pauses and we talk it over with you before touching a thing. Take a photograph of the tiles, ridge or verge that troubles you, add your postcode, and send both our way.
The rules set no separate standard for height, so each roof is judged on how it is held. On high ground the wind gets there sooner, which is why ridge, verge and tile edges come first. Marley says mortar alone is unreliable for ridge and hip tiles since the 2014 revision of BS 5534. Survey photos show what holds your roof.
All Saints carries a Grade I listing, and because Anglican services continue there, repairs follow the Church's internal permission process, a faculty, instead of the council's listed building consent. The parish and the diocese hold that route. For your own house nearby, Croydon's planning team can say whether any listing applies to it, and we put that question to them before any covering changes.
Croydon's published fee is £488 per four weeks for each elevation, the minimum licence runs for one month, and the council also holds a refundable bond of £50 per square metre of enclosed highway. A scaffold set entirely on your own drive involves no licence at all. Where a licence applies, Croydon's required site visit comes before any poles go up, and your date follows from that.
Send the page of the report that mentions the roof, a photo of the roof area it names, and your Sanderstead postcode. A buyer's report may not have involved going onto the roof, so we go up and look at it ourselves first. The written price follows our survey, and the photos from it can be passed to the buyer or the seller.
Snap the ridge, verge or tiles that bother you, add your Sanderstead postcode, and we will offer a survey slot.
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