Roofers in East Riding Of Yorkshire

Roofing in East Riding Of Yorkshire

The defining covering across the East Riding is the clay pantile, that S-curved orange tile you see from Beverley out through Driffield and across the Wolds villages. Pantiles came into the Humber ports as ballast from the Low Countries and were then made locally in huge numbers, and they behave unlike anything else. They sit at low pitches, they were traditionally sealed underneath with mortar torching rather than felt, and they interlock only on one edge, so a single displaced tile lets wind get under a whole run. When a Wolds roof starts leaking it is usually because the torching has crumbled away, not because the tiles have failed.

Hull is a separate case. The city was among the most heavily bombed in Britain, losing an enormous proportion of its housing, and the rebuilding that followed brought flat roofs, prefabricated construction and 1950s estates into a city that had previously been mostly Victorian terrace. That legacy is why flat roofing and full re-roofing feature so strongly in the local job mix. Out on the Holderness coast, Bridlington, Hornsea and Withernsea take salt spray and gales off the North Sea, and this is the fastest-eroding coastline in Europe, so exposure here is unusually severe for the modest scale of the buildings.

If you own a pantiled house, the right modern approach is to strip carefully, salvage and reuse sound tiles, and re-lay over a breathable membrane with mechanical fixing at the perimeter, rather than smearing fresh mortar over failing mortar. It costs more on day one and considerably less over twenty years. Beverley's conservation area will also want the original tiles kept.