A pitched roof is any roof built with sloping faces rather than a flat deck. The word pitch is the angle of those faces, but when people talk about types they mean the shape: how many slopes there are, where they meet and what happens at the ends. That shape is what you see from the pavement, and it determines which parts of the roof take the abuse.
Four forms cover most of the houses around Stroud: the gable, the hip, the mansard and the lean-to, with a few hybrids between them. Each has junctions where two faces meet or where a face meets a wall, and nearly every leak and every extra cost on a re-tile comes from those junctions rather than from the open field of tiles. This guide is about the outward form. The timber frame underneath, whether cut on site or delivered as trusses, is the subject of our answer on cut roofs and trussed roofs. The wider service is on our pitched roofing page.
Gable roofs: two slopes, two vertical ends
The gable roof is the simplest form that is still a proper roof. Two rectangular slopes lean against each other along a ridge, and at each end the wall rises in a triangle up to the ridge. That triangle is the gable.
How it sheds water and wind
Water runs straight down each slope to the gutter on the long side. There are no corners for it to collect in, which is why a plain gable is the easiest form to keep watertight. Wind is a different matter. A gable end is a flat wall facing the weather, and the roof edge where the slope stops, called the verge, is where wind gets under the covering and tries to lift it.
Weak points
The ridge and the verge. The ridge pieces sit on the top of the roof where nothing shelters them, and the verge tiles run up the rake beside the gable wall. BS 5534 asks for ridge and verge pieces to be fixed mechanically rather than trusting mortar by itself, so a verge that has been pointed in and nothing more is something we look at closely. A gable roof can also show a dip along the ridge when the frame has moved, which our answer on a sagging roof ridge covers.
Re-tiling a gable
Re-tiling is as straightforward as it gets. There are two large planes to strip and lay, a ridge, and two verges. MyBuilder's 2026 guide puts a full re-roof on a gable house at £5,000 to £8,000, against £8,000 to £12,000 for a hipped one, and the gap is largely the extra cutting and detailing that a hip needs.
Hip roofs: every wall gets a slope
On a hip roof the ends slope as well as the sides, so the roof leans in from all four walls and meets at a short ridge, or at a single point on a square building. The sloping edge where two faces meet at an outward corner is the hip.
How it sheds water and wind
A hip roof carries water to the eaves on all four sides. With no gable wall standing square to the weather, the wind meets a slope on every side rather than a flat face. It is a compact, well-braced shape and a familiar one on detached houses and bungalows.
Weak points
The hips themselves. Each hip is a diagonal line along which tiles must be cut to fit, covered by hip tiles bedded or fixed over the join. At the foot of the hip, the hip end tile or a special bonnet piece carries the weight, and if it fails the whole run can slide. The hips also carry a downward drag. On older bedded hips, we often see cracked mortar and loose hip tiles before any other fault on the house.
Re-tiling a hipped roof
Re-tiling is slower. Every course against a hip needs cut tiles on both sides, and dry-fix hips need purpose-made brackets and ridge-end pieces. Checkatrade's repair guide shows dry hip at £70 to £100 per metre, ex VAT, compared with £50 to £70 per metre for dry ridge. Its re-roof guide gives hipped roofs at £145 to £285 per m² and gables at £110 to £260 per m², +VAT. The extra labour in the hips explains why a hip costs more than a gable of similar floor area.
Half-hip and other hybrids
Many older Stroud houses do not fit neatly into either box. The half-hip, sometimes called a jerkinhead, has a gable that is clipped at the top by a small sloping face. The roof is a gable for most of its height and a hip at the very peak.
Why builders used it
The clipped top gives the gable end a small sloping face in place of the sharp upper corner, and it keeps the roof compact on a narrow plot.
What it means for repairs
You inherit the weaknesses of both forms. The roof has a ridge, a verge that runs for most of the gable and then turns into a short hip. Where the verge meets the hip is a junction that needs careful detailing, and a plain re-pointing job often falls short there. On a half-hip we ask to look at that junction from the loft side as well as from the roof, because staining on the timbers inside tells us where water has been getting in.
Gables with dormers or cross-wings
A third hybrid is the cross-gabled house, where a second gable sits at right angles to the main ridge. The two roofs meet in a valley. We cover valleys below, and in detail in our guide to valleys on tiled roofs.
Mansard roofs: two pitches on each side
A mansard roof has two slopes on each side of the building. The lower slope is very steep, nearly vertical, and the upper slope is shallow. The shape gives usable floor space inside the roof, which is why it was favoured for adding rooms in the roofline.
How it sheds water and wind
The steep lower face drains quickly and takes the weather as a near-wall. The shallow upper slope or flat top is the part under pressure, because it is the most likely place for water to stand. Many mansards finish with a low-pitched or flat deck, which brings in the rules for flat roof falls. BS 6229, as cited by Rockwool, has a flat deck laid to 1 in 40 on the drawings so that the finished fall still reaches 1 in 80.
Weak points
Where the steep face turns into the shallow one there is a long horizontal junction, and it depends on flashing and careful detailing. Dormer windows are often set into the steep face, and each adds its own set of cheeks, valleys and flashings. A mansard has more joints per square metre than the other forms.
Planning
A mansard is also the form most often used for a roof extension, and extensions of this type are not permitted development on land in a conservation area or in the Cotswolds National Landscape. If you are considering adding to a roof, ask Stroud District Council's planning team first. Our answer on dormers and permitted development explains the principle.
Lean-to roofs: one slope against a wall
A lean-to has a single slope that rises from a low eaves to a wall at the high edge. It is common on rear extensions, porches and outbuildings.
How it sheds water and wind
The water goes one way, which suits a gutter along the single low edge. The high edge is the junction with the main building, which is the critical detail. A lean-to is a single plane, so wind comes at it from the open side and lifts at the eaves.
Weak points
The abutment, where the top of the roof meets the wall. Lead is let into a groove in the wall and dressed down over the tiles, or soakers and a cover flashing step up a side wall. If this fails, water runs straight into the building. MyJobQuote and Checkatrade price flashing repairs at £50 to £70 per metre, with stepped flashing at £80 to £120 per metre in Code 5 lead, ex VAT. A lean-to is also often built at a low angle, and tiles have minimum pitches below which water can be driven up the laps.
Ventilation
Under BS 5250, as set out by Marley, a lean-to or mono-pitch roof with a cold-roof construction needs ventilation at the high level as well as at the eaves, because there is no ridge for warm moist air to escape through. Damp under a lean-to ceiling is sometimes condensation, not a leak. Our guide to roof ventilation and condensation goes further.
Valleys, abutments and where the forms meet
Almost no house is a single clean form. Extensions, bay windows, porches and chimneys create junctions, and those are where the water gets in.
Valleys
Where two slopes meet at an inward angle, the valley between them gathers the water of both. It is lined in lead, or in a manufactured trough, or in a swept form where the tiles themselves curve round. Moss, leaves and debris build up in the narrow channel, and a failing lining shows as damp at the ceiling below. Our guide to why tiled roofs leak follows those routes in detail.
Abutments and chimneys
Where a roof stops against a wall or runs up to a chimney stack, the junction depends on lead. Lead sheet is graded by code number, from Code 3 to Code 8, with Code 4 described by Leadworx as the standard choice for general flashing. Lead flashing can last for over 80 years when correctly installed, according to MyJobQuote.
Eaves
At the bottom of every form, the eaves tile line leads into the gutter. If the first course of tiles is too short or tilted wrongly, water misses the gutter.
On a survey we read the roof as a set of junctions. The open tiled areas are rarely the problem; the lines where one plane meets another usually are.
How the form affects a re-tile and its price
The more junctions, the more time. A simple gable gives a roofer large, uninterrupted planes to strip and lay, and the work goes quickly. A hip, a valley or a mansard break adds cutting, lead, and fixing.
MyBuilder's guide shows a typical full re-roof of £5,000 to £12,000, with the form accounting for much of the spread. The same guide quotes labour at £50 to £130 per m² and a roofer's day at £250 to £300. Scaffold, which is needed on all of them, is about £1,125 in MyBuilder's guide and £700 to £1,300 in Checkatrade's.
What stays the same
Whatever the form, the covering is stripped, the battens and underlay are inspected, the new tiles are laid with mechanical fixings, and the junctions are re-detailed. The ridge and hip tiles are fixed in line with BS 5534. Under 25 per cent of the building envelope and under 50 per cent of the roof, re-roofing does not normally need a building control application. Past those limits Building Regulations approval applies, and a Part L thermal upgrade can follow.
What we do on a survey
We photograph each junction on your own roof, note the pitch and the form, and give you a written quote. Like-for-like materials are the starting point on an older roof. If a structural fault is spotted, our guide to roof structure defects shows what we look for. The work carries our 10-year workmanship guarantee, in writing.