Roofers in Oldland Common
Roofing in Oldland Common, the former hat-making and coal-mining village on the eastern fringe of Bristol, where St Anne's church and an 1837 school anchor a long local history.
Oldland Common at a glance
- Distance
- 28.4 road miles south-south-west of Stroud
- Council
- South Gloucestershire Council
- Parish church
- St Anne (Grade II)
- Parish
- Bitton, between Bristol and Bath
Oldland Common's roofs, from the hat trade to the coalfield
Oldland Common lies in the civil parish of Bitton, between the centres of Bristol and Bath, on the eastern fringe of Bristol in what was the Bristol coalfield. It is a village with a working past. Hat-making was the largest employer in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and at the 1841 census it employed half of the working population. Coal mining was common locally as well, and the village had its own pit on Cowhorn Hill during the 1800s.
Two buildings stand out in the record. St Anne's Church of England Primary School was built in 1837 as Oldland National School, and the Church of St Anne is listed Grade II. Houses here come from more than one building wave, and we never name a village's roof material from a map. Instead we read your roof on the day, with photographs, and the covering we find is the one we quote for.
A village that has changed its main trade more than once usually has houses from several different building waves, and it usually has extensions and conversions added later. That is the kind of mix where a standard price list is least useful. Detail matters more: how the roof meets a neighbour, what the chimney does, where the extension joins the original, and whether a flat-roofed addition has been tacked on to a pitched house. Each of those junctions is a place where water can get in. Those details are what the written quote sets out once the survey is done.
Wooded hillside lined with rows of stone houses and slate roofs 
Stone village houses with slate and tile roofs above green fields
Chapter 01
When half the village made hats: roofs from the 1841 census
A trade that employed half the working population leaves old buildings behind, and old buildings leave old roofs.
Chapter 01In this chapter
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, hat-making was the biggest employer in Oldland Common, and by the 1841 census it accounted for half of the working population. A village organised around one trade tends to be built quickly in one period, and then repaired, extended and adapted for the next two centuries. Whatever the covering on a house from that era was originally, it may well have been renewed, patched or re-laid since.
In this chapter
That has two consequences for the work, and both belong in the quote. First, what you can see from the road may be younger than the walls beneath it. A modern covering can sit on very old rafters, and the old timber is the part that decides how long the roof will last. A rafter is one of the sloping timbers that run from the ridge down to the wall, and the covering is hung from battens fixed across them. Where those rafters have been damp for years, the repair needs to start with the timber, not the tiles.
Second, the older the house, the less likely it is that anything is square. Walls lean, ridges bow slightly and a verge may run out of line with the gable beneath. Modern materials are made to a regular size, so matching them to an irregular roof takes patience at the cutting stage. We allow for that in the labour rather than treating it as a surprise.
Reading a roof like a document
Every roof carries its own record. Different shades of tile, a patch of mortar of a different colour, a row of nails of a different era: each is a repair, and together they show where the roof has failed before. Failures tend to repeat at the same places, because the cause is a feature of the building, such as a chimney that moves slightly or a gutter that has always overflowed at one corner.
Our survey notes those patterns, and the photographs show them to you. If the repair history points to a single recurring problem, we propose fixing the cause rather than patching the symptom again. For a roof that has outlived several repairs, a full replacement may in the end cost less than a fourth patch, and we lay both options out in numbers so the choice is yours. The roof repairs page shows how a repair is judged against a replacement, with typical UK ranges for each.
A roof that has been patched three times is telling you where it fails.
- 1841census year when hat-making employed half of the working population
- 1837year Oldland National School, now St Anne's Primary, was built
- 3 mileslength of the Avon Valley heritage railway, which has a station at Oldland Common
Chapter 02
The Cowhorn Hill pit and the chimneys of a coalfield village
A village with its own colliery burned coal, and the stacks that served those fires have a particular story.
Chapter 02In this chapter
Coal mining was common around Oldland Common, and the village had its own pit on Cowhorn Hill during the 1800s, so the fuel of the era is not in doubt. In places where coal was close and cheap, it was burned in domestic grates, and every grate sent smoke and soot through a flue to a chimney stack on the roof.
In this chapter
The chimney is often the most exposed part of a roof. It stands clear of the ridge, takes weather on all four faces and carries several different materials in a small space: masonry, mortar, a lead flashing, a pot and a flaunching, which is the mortar haunch that holds the pot in place. When any one of those fails, water reaches the wall below. A damp patch on a chimney breast inside a bedroom is often the first sign.
Old flues that once served coal can also hold residues that attack the masonry from the inside. If the stack has not been used for years, it may be worth capping the pot to keep rain out while leaving a vent so that the flue can breathe. We look at the pot, the flaunching, the pointing and the flashing as one assembly, because fixing one and ignoring the rest only moves the leak.
Rebuild or repair
A stack that leans, has cracked brickwork or has lost large areas of pointing may need rebuilding from the roofline up. The decision turns on how deep the damage goes and whether the bricks themselves are still sound. We take photographs of the stack from the roof and from the loft, and give you a repair option and a rebuild option with figures for each. Typical UK ranges for stack work are published on our chimney repairs page, with the source and date, so you can compare our written quote with the national picture.
If a chimney is no longer needed, taking it down below the roofline and re-covering the slope is another route. That leaves the house with one fewer weak point and a clean roof surface, and the loft below it gains some space. It is a decision to talk through, because the flue may still serve a boiler or a fire elsewhere in the house. Taking a stack down also changes the party wall line if a neighbour shares it, so we raise that early and put the agreement in writing before any brick comes off.
Chapter 03
St Anne's school of 1837 and the church of St Anne
An 1837 school and a Grade II church, each with its own approach to roof work.
Chapter 03In this chapter
St Anne's Church of England Primary School was built in 1837 as Oldland National School, a date that gives the village a fixed point in its building history. The Church of St Anne is listed Grade II. Neither is the sort of job a homeowner commissions, but both shape the street scene, and the rules that apply to them show how roof work gets approved in a village like this.
In this chapter
The church, as a building in use for worship, is covered by the ecclesiastical exemption, so roof work on it goes through a faculty from the diocese. A school is a different case: schools are normally run by a trust or the local authority, and work is commissioned through them, usually timed for the holidays when the building is empty. We mention this because the same principle applies to your own roof. Work is easiest when the time of year, the people involved and the access are all agreed in advance.
For a house near the school, one practical question is school-run traffic. Mornings and afternoons are congested on streets near any primary school, and a delivery lorry or a skip lorry can block a road for far longer than anyone expects. We schedule deliveries for the middle of the day wherever the street allows it, and we talk to neighbours about parking before the first lorry arrives. A short note through nearby letterboxes, giving the scaffold dates, avoids most of the friction.
Guttering and the school-side street
On older buildings of this type, the eaves are where wear shows first. A gutter that has dripped on the same patch of wall for decades leaves a green stain and eventually softens the brick or stone beneath it. Replacing the gutter is the easy part; the harder question is what the water has done to the fascia board behind it. We probe the timber, and where it is soft we repair or replace it as part of the same visit. Rafter ends behind a leaking gutter are worth a look from inside the loft too, because rot can run further back than the fascia suggests. Our guttering, soffits and fascias page sets out typical ranges and what each job includes.
Wondering whether your home is in a conservation area? Oldland Common is not one, but listing applies building by building, so we check with South Gloucestershire Council before any change of appearance goes into a quote.
Map showing Oldland Common and the Stroud service radius, with nearby towns we also cover.
Near Oldland Common
Roof work we do here
Hat-making chimneys and St Anne's school
Why would a coal-era chimney need more than new pointing?
The pot, flaunching, flashing and brickwork work together, and soot from old coal fires can damage the masonry from the inside. We inspect all of them from the roof and loft, then offer a repair price and a rebuild price so you can compare.
How do you decide between patching and replacing an old village roof?
We read the repair history in the covering and look at the timber beneath it. If the same fault keeps coming back, a full replacement may cost less over time than another patch. We give both in figures.
Is the area around St Anne's church and school in Oldland Common a conservation area?
No. The village centre is not in a conservation area, though boundaries can change, so we confirm with South Gloucestershire Council first. The council can also tell you whether your house is listed, and what that would mean for any work you have in mind, which is worth knowing before you compare quotes.
Do you work near the primary school at drop-off time?
We try to avoid deliveries and big lifts at school-run hours on streets near any primary school. The delivery slot is agreed with you at the survey, and we speak to neighbours about parking beforehand.