Clipstone · NG21
Roof Repairs In Clipstone
Is your Clipstone house on its first roof, or its second?
Repairs and re-roofs for the colliery model village under the headstocks, from the avenues to Mansfield Road
Most of Clipstone was built in one decade. The Bolsover Colliery Company put up 648 houses here in the 1920s, so a large share of the village's roofs started life in the same few years and have aged at the same pace ever since. Plenty were stripped and re-covered once already, usually in concrete tiles somewhere between the seventies and the nineties, and it's often that second covering that brings people to us for roof repairs in Clipstone now. The rest still carry older work and a century of patching. Either way, the faults run in families: one house on Fourth Avenue with a loose ridge usually means the neighbours aren't far behind.
Book a free roof survey in Clipstone
Leave your details and we'll ring you back to arrange a survey. The visit is free, you're under no obligation once we've been, and a roof that doesn't need work gets called a roof that doesn't need work.
Fully insured
Free surveys in Clipstone
Itemised fixed prices
8 minutes from base
Who does the work
Doing Clipstone roofs once, and properly
Some Clipstone roofs have already had one cheap replacement since the pit closed, and it's starting to show. Chris has been in roofing since his teenage years, over 20 of them, and he runs his business the other way round: do it right first time.
The team stick at a job until it's watertight, even when that makes for a very long day. They work hard and take pride in it, because this is a firm that puts the customer before profit.
1,000+
Repairs carried out
10 years
Workmanship guarantee, on paper
Free
Surveys, quotes and honest bad news
No upselling
A patch that will hold gets recommended as a patch
A model village laid out on a ruler
Clipstone's plan gives it away from the air. The Duke of Portland leased the land to the Bolsover Colliery Company in 1912, sinking stopped for the First World War, and coal was finally reached in 1922. Housing followed fast. Architects Houfton & Kington drew a grid of straight avenues broken by an oval circus in the middle, and by 1931 the village held 3,443 people, six times its population ten years earlier. Houfton designed for steep roof pitches that could carry pantiles, with contrasting tiles, gables facing the street and brick air vents. The managers lived apart, in two sets of larger semis either side of the colliery gate on Mansfield Road, known as The Villas and The Cottages. Many of those houses still stand.
Above all of it are the headstocks. The National Coal Board rebuilt the pit between 1950 and 1953, and its two lattice towers, about 65 metres high, were the tallest in Europe when they went up. The colliery shut in April 2003, three years after the headstocks and powerhouse were listed Grade II, and the argument about what to do with them has been running ever since. For roofs, the village's history matters in a plainer way. Company houses built to one budget in one decade wear out on one timetable, and the steep pitches Houfton chose mean any slipped tile is a long climb from the gutter. Getting up there safely is a big part of what a repair costs.
The roof repairs Clipstone needs most
Roof Replacement
The concrete-tile re-roofs done across the avenues decades ago are reaching the end of their lives together. When we're asked to quote a full re-roof in Clipstone, we also look hard at the rafters and battens underneath. They may not have been checked since the last strip.
See the service : roof replacement in Clipstone
Chimney Repairs
End-terrace stacks on the company houses sit on stepped brick corbels, and a century of coal smoke has worn the mortar. We repoint, reflaunch and re-lead them. If the stack is shared between two houses, we'll want both owners agreed before we start.
See the service : chimney repairs in Clipstone
Roof Leak Repairs
On a steep Clipstone roof, water that gets past a cracked tile can run a long way down the felt before it drips. We trace it in the loft first, so the repair goes where the water got in, not just where the stain appeared.
See the service : roof leak repairs in ClipstoneWe also do every other service on the menu in Clipstone, from fascias to full re-roofs.
What a Clipstone roof needs from whoever fixes it
These houses were designed as a set and they fail as a set. Here is what we watch for on the avenues and around the circus.
Knowing which covering you've got
Original clay, a seventies concrete re-roof or something newer. Each fails in its own way, and a slipped tile means something different on each. We tell you which yours is before we talk money.
Respect for the steep pitch
Houfton built steep to suit pantiles. That sheds rain well but makes for awkward access, so we plan ladders, roof ladders or scaffold properly rather than improvising at the eaves.
Gable vents left working
The brick air vents in the facing gables ventilate the roof space. We've seen them filled with mortar or foam during past repairs, which traps condensation in the loft. We keep them clear.
Next door kept in the loop
Semis and short terraces share ridges, stacks and gutters. When a repair touches the joint, we'll speak to your neighbour too, so the fix doesn't stop halfway along the roof.
Honest about the trees
Houses towards Vicar Water and the forest side get more leaf litter and moss than those near Mansfield Road. We'll say if your gutters need clearing more often, and we won't sell you a treatment you don't need.
"When we've re-roofed one house on a Clipstone avenue, we've usually been asked to price for the neighbours within a year or two."
From the Clipstone jobs Roof Repairs Mansfield has taken on
How a Clipstone roof repair runs
First contact
Phone, or use the form. Tell us roughly where the problem is and when it shows up. A rough description is all we need at this stage.
Survey, roof and loft
We go up the slope and into the loft. On Clipstone's company houses that means checking the ridge bedding, the stack where it meets the tiles, the gable vents and whether the battens under a later concrete re-roof are still sound. Photos of each go into the findings.
The findings, with photos
We show you photos of what we found and explain what failed first and what follows if it's left. Then we say whether it's urgent.
A price that holds
One written figure, broken into lines. Access costs are listed separately, so you can tell how much of the price is scaffolding.
Doing the work
Roof ladders or a tower go up to suit the steep pitch. Loose tiles are refixed with clips or nails, ridges rebedded or dry-fixed, and lead around the stack renewed where it has split. If a shared joint is involved, the work runs across it, with your neighbour's agreement.
Handover
You get photos of the finished repair, the debris goes away with us, and the 10 year written guarantee is yours before the van leaves Clipstone.
Ten years, in writing, before we leave the drive
Every roofer in Nottinghamshire will tell you their work is guaranteed. Ask to see the paper and the conversation often changes. Ours doesn't: work booked through Roof Repairs Mansfield carries a 10 year workmanship guarantee as a physical document, dated, signed and handed over with the completion photos - not a line in an email you'll never find again. Materials sit on top of that with their manufacturers' own cover, which differs product to product, so your paperwork names the cover that actually applies to your job.
A guarantee that long only makes commercial sense if repairs are done in a way that doesn't invite a return visit. Around Mansfield that means respecting what the housing actually is: coverings and fixings from the colliery era that fail as systems, not as single tiles, and mortar that has been quietly powdering since the pits shut. So failed material gets stripped back to something sound before new goes on, mortar gets matched to the age of the brick, and anything we can't make right on the day gets said out loud rather than covered over.
The blunt version: if water we were paid to stop finds its way back through our work inside 10 years, we return and put it right at our own cost. That promise has to be cheap to honour - and it is, because of how the work gets done the first time.
10 yrs
Written workmanship cover
1,000+
Repairs carried out
Insured
Public liability held
Named
Manufacturer cover per job
What to do in Clipstone
The pit left Clipstone more than its housing. The spoil heaps are now a country park, and the medieval kings got here first.
Vicar Water Country Park
Around 80 hectares of reclaimed colliery tips south of the village, centred on Vicar Pond, which the 5th Duke of Portland dammed in the 1870s as a fishery. The park opened in 1982, Newark & Sherwood District Council took it over in 1992, and it doubled in size in 1999. The pond is now a coarse fishery.
Find it on Google Maps : Vicar Water Country Park
Clipstone Headstocks
The pair of lattice towers and the brick powerhouse between them, built by the National Coal Board between 1950 and 1953 and listed Grade II in 2000. Inside are Koepe friction winders, a system rarely used in Britain before Clipstone. The towers are best seen from Mansfield Road or across Vicar Pond.
Find it on Google Maps : Clipstone Headstocks
King John's Palace, Kings Clipstone
The rubble remains of a royal hunting lodge in the older village of Kings Clipstone, used by English kings from Henry II in 1181 to Richard II in 1393. It became a scheduled monument in 1954. The ruin stands on private farmland off Main Road and can be seen from the roadside.
Find it on Google Maps : King John's Palace, Kings ClipstoneClipstone on the map
8 minutes from our yard on Sandy Lane, NG18 2LT. Planning applications here go to Newark & Sherwood District Council.
Word from around the town
What homeowners across the Mansfield patch made of the work, in their own words.
"The back bedroom ceiling had a mark that came and went for two years and I'd stopped even noticing it. When Babet hit it turned into a proper leak overnight. They came out two days later, found a split flashing round the chimney - nowhere near where the stain was - and had it done in a morning. Showed me photos of the fault before and after. The quote and the invoice were the same number, which I'm told is rarer than it should be."
"Ours is one of the old colliery houses and the ridge had been shedding bits of mortar onto the path for months. I expected to be told we needed a new roof - the bloke next door had been quoted for exactly that by someone else. Instead they rebedded the ridge, refixed four tiles and told me the rest of the roof was fine for years yet. Charged a fraction of what I'd braced myself for."
"Water was streaming down the front of the house whenever it rained hard and I assumed the worst about the roof. Turned out the gutter had lost its fall and was tipping everything over the edge in one spot. They reset the brackets, sorted a joint, checked the gully at the bottom and were gone within a couple of hours. Also pointed out a slate that wants watching next year rather than fixing now - appreciated that."
"Bought a 1900s terrace near the town centre and the survey flagged the chimney. Two other firms quoted to take it down entirely. These lads went up, told me the stack itself was sound and it just needed repointing with the right mortar, new flaunching and a cap on the dead flue. Three years on the chimney breast is bone dry. Kept the chimney, saved about two grand."
"The extension roof had ponded for years and every couple of winters someone would patch it and it would come back. They were the first to explain the actual problem - no fall on the deck - and quoted to sort that rather than just laying another layer of felt over it. New rubber roof, water actually runs off it now. You get told the truth, which is worth paying for on its own."
Been a customer?
A short review is the most useful thing you can give a local firm - it tells the next household in Mansfield with a dripping ceiling who they can trust with it.
The rest of our patch
Every town and village below gets the same free survey and ten year guarantee, from Warsop down to Kirkby and from Shirebrook across to Ollerton.
Roof repair prices in Clipstone
On a Clipstone semi, the pitch usually affects the price more than the repair itself. Refixing a few tiles from a roof ladder is a small job, but anything near the ridge on these steep roofs may need a tower or scaffold, and that is a separate line on our quote. Shared stacks and ridges add a little coordination time. The biggest variable is the covering: a sound original roof with one fault is a cheap fix, while a tired concrete re-roof with rotten battens underneath is heading for replacement, and we'll tell you which one you have.
See the price guideRoof repair questions from Clipstone
Which council handles planning in Clipstone, and do the listed headstocks affect my house?
Newark & Sherwood District Council, not Mansfield, even though most Clipstone addresses have a Mansfield postal town. The headstocks and powerhouse are listed Grade II, but that listing covers the colliery structures, not the houses around them. On an ordinary unlisted house, repairing the roof like for like needs no planning permission, and in most cases neither does re-covering in a similar-looking tile. Adding dormers or raising the ridge is a different matter, and so is any work on a listed building. If your job is borderline, we'll tell you so, and point you to the district council's planning team before anything starts.
Why do so many Clipstone roofs seem to fail at the same time?
Because they were built at the same time. The Bolsover company put up 648 houses in the 1920s to one set of designs, and plenty were re-covered in a single wave decades later. Same materials, same age, same exposure, so the same faults show up within a few years of each other. If the house next door has just had its ridge rebedded or its stack repointed, it's worth having yours looked at. It doesn't mean yours needs the same work, but it is a better time than most to check.
My house was re-roofed in concrete tiles years ago. Is that a problem?
Not on its own. Lots of Clipstone houses had their original coverings replaced with concrete interlocking tiles, and many of those roofs are still doing their job. What we check is what went underneath. Some re-roofs kept the old battens, some skimped on the felt, and not every roofer checked the rafters before putting the new tiles on. If the tiles are sound and the timbers are dry, a repair is the right answer. If the battens are crumbling, patching only puts off the bigger bill.
Can you repair a chimney stack we share with next door?
Yes, and it's one of the most common jobs we do on the avenues. A shared stack sits across the party wall, so both owners are responsible for it and both need to agree before work starts. We'll quote the whole stack, explain how the cost splits, and talk to your neighbour directly if that helps. What we won't do is repoint only your half and leave the other side to keep letting water into both lofts.
Get your Clipstone roof checked before the house next door teaches you what's coming
We'll go up, go into the loft, and show you photos of what we find, along with a written price you can hold us to. Clipstone is about eight minutes from our yard, so a survey is easy to fit in this week.