Roofers in the Wylye Valley

The Wylye Valley isn't a town — it's a string of villages down the river between Warminster and Salisbury: Codford, Wylye, Stockton, Steeple Langford, Heytesbury and half a dozen more, none of them much more than a church, a pub and a few dozen roofs. Flint and stone chequerwork, timber-framed cottages, and roofs thick with thatch are as common as tile along this stretch of chalk downland — proper old building, much of it a fair way down a single-track lane rather than on anything you'd call a through road.

What that means for us is steep pitches under heavy natural coverings, flint and stone walls where the leadwork at the abutment has to be right first time, and open downland exposure that finds every weak point in a roof faster than a sheltered village would. Most properties come with outbuildings too — barns, garaging, the odd stable block — and a fair amount of what we do out here is profiled sheet and standing seam on those rather than the house roof itself. Getting a scaffold lorry down some of these lanes is its own part of the job.