Victorian & Edwardian Terraces

Slate roofs into their second century — repaired with matching materials and a proper understanding of how terraces work.

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The terrace is the building we work on more than any other. From the boot-and-shoe streets of Leicester, Northampton and Kettering to Birmingham's Moseley and Kings Heath, Luton's High Town and the great terraced swathes of North London, the same house repeats — and so does its roof.

What a terrace roof actually is

Almost always Welsh slate, laid between 1870 and 1910, on battens over the rafters with little or nothing beneath. The slates themselves are superb — many will see out another century — but the iron nails holding them have been rusting for over a hundred years. When slates start slipping one at a time, year after year, that's "nail sickness": the fixings failing wholesale, not the slates. It's the single most important diagnosis on this housing type, because it separates a £-hundreds repair from a re-slating conversation.

Then there's everything the street can't see. Terraces share their roofscape: party parapets, valleys between back additions, and — especially in London — butterfly roofs draining through a single hidden lead gutter behind the front wall. Water that gets in through any of it travels along shared timbers, which is why the stain on your ceiling can start on next door's slope.

The work terraces need

Slate refixing and matching (reclaimed Welsh slate, so repairs disappear), lead renewal in parapet and valley gutters, chimney work on stacks that serve two houses, and sorting the much-patched felt on back additions — usually by replacing it with EPDM rather than patching patch on patch. When the fixings really are done, re-slating frequently reuses your original slates over new battens and breathable felt: the roof keeps its face and you keep a chunk of the budget.

Repair options

Repair or replace

On a terrace the question is rarely "repair or replace" — it's "which one is this roof asking for". Occasional slips with sound fixings: repair, always. Chronic slips across the slope: re-slating, and patching becomes money burned. We tell you which pattern your roof shows, with photographs from up there to prove it either way.

Our process

How we do it

Terrace work means respecting the party wall — flashings and parapets are shared, and a repair done carelessly on one side becomes next door's leak. We survey the whole roofline, not just your slice of it, flag anything that genuinely involves the neighbour, and match materials so the row still reads as one roof from the street.

Common questions

Frequently asked

Our terrace roof is original — should we be proud or worried? +

Both, mildly. An original slate roof at 120 years old is proof of a superb material, but it's running on fixings long past their design life. Keep an eye on the rate of slips: one every few years is character; several a winter is the fixings telling you their time is up.

Can you tell whose roof a shared leak is coming from? +

Usually, yes — it takes tracing rather than guessing, because terraces share timbers, valleys and parapets and water moves along all three. We follow the staining back to the entry point and show you photographs, which also settles the "whose bill is it" conversation with evidence rather than opinion.

Is a London butterfly roof different to repair? +

The covering is the same slate, but the drainage is the difference: everything depends on one central lead valley and its outlet. Most butterfly-roof "mystery leaks" are that valley — worn lead or a blocked outlet — and the fix is leadwork, not slate work. Our North London page covers the pattern in detail.