Our team has just completed work on the Old Manor, a Grade II listed farmhouse in Hampshire. The re-roof of this medieval house, with Georgian and Edwardian extensions, commenced in June 2021. This is an amazing building with the original Great Hall still relatively untouched. In later years, various extensions were added to the hall to create an extensive family home.
It was a pleasure working with architect Adam Clark from The Goddard Partnership Limited, based in Bishops Waltham, on this project.
The Old Manor resident bats
A bat licence had been obtained prior to the works commencing, but as the scope of works changed so dramatically because of the condition of the roof timbers, a new bat licence had to be applied for. This caused a five week delay to the works. This was an important lesson for us and will be something that we will pay a lot closer attention to in the future.
Our roofing specification had to take the bat’s needs into consideration, this included specialist roof insulation and BS747 felt. In addition special bat tiles were used at regular intervals throughout the roof, to allow ease of access.
Bat tiles in roof 
Original timber roof supports
Work carried out
After stripping the roof tiles off the building, we inspected the roof timbers and found that there had been incorrectly designed purlin supports. This had allowed significant deflection of the existing rafters. We designed new purlin supports and re-construct collapsing gables to stabilise the roof for the next 400 years of its life. We retained as much of the original timber as possible to carry out this project.
For tiling of the upper roof, we used hand-made Spicer tiles in Hanbury Burmarsh and Honeywell, this combination of weathered red and mellow brown greats a roof in keeping with the style of the property. On lower section of roof we re-used as many of the salvaged Welsh slates as we were able to and augmented these with a closely matched second hand Welsh slate.
We also inserted ventilated chimney caps that were created especially for the Old Manor and lead flat roofs were renewed by re-casting the salvaged lead.
Before 
After
After 
After
Why use West Country Tiling
We are traditional roofers who have over 30 years’ experience. We provide roofing services from the wallplate up and specialise in historical roofing. We create roofs with all individual patina and perfect imperfections and that come from using handmade tiles.
If you have a historical roofing project that requires an experienced team, contact us on 01373 462 224 or email us on info@westcountrytiling.com.