Roofers in Whickham

Whickham stands on its hill above the Derwent with views across the Tyne valley, and the price of the view is paid by the roofs. Wind and rain arrive here first and leave last, which is why a village of otherwise well-kept houses generates a steady stream of slipped tiles, worked-loose ridges and weeping chimney flashings. Willow Roofing is an owner-led firm — the owner, twenty-three years and counting on the tools, surveys and runs every job personally — and exposed roofs are where that experience earns its keep.

We should be straightforward: our sixty-three MyBuilder reviews, every one positive, were earned in other towns — including Gateshead, ten minutes down the bank, and Ryton, just across the Derwent. Whickham sits naturally between the two, and we would like our first reviews here to read like all the others: fair price, tidy site, roof finished properly.

The heart of Whickham is the conservation area around Church Green, where St Mary's church presides over stone cottages and older houses whose roofs — slate and clay for the most part — deserve like-for-like materials and a sympathetic hand. Alterations here are rightly constrained, and a roofer needs to know the difference between renewing a roof and rewriting it.

Most of the village, though, is the confident interwar and post-war Whickham: generous semi-detached houses along tree-lined roads, many with bay windows, hips and broad chimneys, built when the village grew as a favoured spot above the smoke of the valley. Their original tiles are now sixty to ninety years old, and on this exposed hilltop the mortar bedding at ridge and verge rarely lasts as long as the tile beneath it.

We have no reviewed Whickham jobs to show you yet, and we prefer to say so rather than imply otherwise. What we can show is reviewed work on either side of the village: in Gateshead, a new porch roof the customer called a fantastic job, naming the whole crew in his review; and in Ryton, three reviewed jobs covering re-cemented roof gullies with thirty years of moss cleared, a Velux repair completed on budget, and a gutter clearance. Whickham is a short drive from both, and every one of those customers said they would have us back.

On Whickham's hilltop the priorities are exposure-driven. Ridge and verge work leads the list — re-bedding and repointing mortar that the wind has worked loose, or converting to a dry-fix system where that is the honest long-term answer. The big interwar semis need chimney repointing, leadwork around stacks and bays, and flat-roof renewal in EPDM or GRP over bay windows and garages. Around Church Green the discipline changes: natural slate, clay tile and lead, repaired like for like. And when an original interwar roof is finally done, we strip and re-roof it with materials chosen to suit the street.