Kirkby-in-Ashfield · NG17
Roof Repairs In Kirkby-in-Ashfield
Up by the Cross in Old Kirkby, or down in the railway town?
Repairs and re-roofs for stone farmhouses, pantiled outbuildings, railway terraces and interwar semis across Kirkby and Annesley
There are really two places under one name here, and roof repairs in Kirkby-in-Ashfield depend a lot on which one you live in. Up the hill, around St Wilfrid's and the medieval cross, is Old Kirkby: a farming village of stone houses, barns and stable ranges, some with slate and some with clay pantiles. Down the slope is the town the railways and the pits built from the nineteenth century on, with brick terraces, interwar semis and big post-war estates. The first needs someone who knows how a pantile is meant to lap. The second mostly needs someone honest about whether a tired 1930s roof is worth patching again. We do both, and we'll tell you which yours is.
Book a free roof survey in Kirkby-in-Ashfield
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 Kirkby-in-Ashfield
Itemised fixed prices
about 15 minutes from base
Who does the work
Experience that suits Kirkby's older roofs
Kirkby has its share of century-old fixings and interwar tiles wearing out faster than people expect. Chris is local and has been on roofs since his teens, so after more than two decades he knows what to look for.
The job gets done efficiently, with no corners cut, and nobody leaves until it's watertight. That's how Chris works, and the team who work for him are just as proud of it.
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 farming village that the railways turned into a town
Old Kirkby still looks like the village it was. The Kirkby Cross conservation area, designated in 1975, takes in about 16 hectares around the medieval cross and holds sixteen listed buildings: the Old Rectory of 1717 in red brick under slate, stone farmhouses on Chapel Street and Church Street, and barns and stable ranges roofed in pantile. St Wilfrid's church was gutted by fire on 6 January 1907 and rebuilt quickly, broach spire and all. Cardinal Wolsey stopped at nearby Kirkby Hardwick in 1530. Much later, in 1904, the fast bowler Harold Larwood was born in Nuncargate, on the edge of the parish, and went on to terrify Australian batsmen in the Bodyline series of 1932-33. Old Kirkby never grew much after that. The town did.
The railways reached Kirkby early. The horse-drawn Mansfield and Pinxton Railway opened in 1819, and by the twentieth century three different companies' lines ran through the town, each with its own station. All three had closed by 1964, and the town waited until the Robin Hood Line for trains again. Between them, the railways and three collieries drew in the people who filled the brick terraces and semis below the old village. For roofs, that means two quite different jobs. In Old Kirkby it's lime, stone and pantile, done to match. In the town, it's mostly interwar and post-war roofs where the original tiles are flaking and the question is whether to repair or start again.
The roof repairs Kirkby-in-Ashfield needs most
Roof Replacement
Kirkby's interwar semis are reaching the point where their original tiles flake faster than anyone can replace them one by one. We'll tell you plainly when a re-roof is cheaper over ten years than another round of patching.
See the service : roof replacement in Kirkby-in-Ashfield
Flat Roof Repairs
Kitchen extensions, porches and garages on the post-war estates are often covered in felt laid decades ago. We repair it where the deck is sound, and re-cover in EPDM or GRP where it isn't.
See the service : flat roof repairs in Kirkby-in-Ashfield
Chimney Repairs
Stone stacks in Old Kirkby want lime mortar and a careful hand, while the brick stacks in the town mostly need repointing and new flaunching. We match the method to the chimney, not the other way round.
See the service : chimney repairs in Kirkby-in-AshfieldWe also do every other service on the menu in Kirkby-in-Ashfield, from fascias to full re-roofs.
Two kinds of Kirkby roof, two kinds of repair
A roofer who treats a pantiled barn on Chapel Street like a 1930s semi on the estate will get one of them wrong. Here's how we handle both.
Pantiles laid the old way
Clay pantiles on Old Kirkby outbuildings rely on the right lap and, often, torching underneath. We reuse sound tiles, source matching reclaimed ones and keep the roof looking like it did before we arrived.
Lime where lime belongs
Stone walls and stacks in the conservation area were built with lime. Repointing them in hard cement traps damp and cracks the stone, so we use a lime mortar that matches the original.
Straight talk on flaking tiles
When clay or early concrete tiles start to delaminate, replacing them one at a time stops making sense. We count what's failing, show you photos and give you both prices: repair and re-roof.
Trees along the old lines
Disused railway cuttings and embankments around Kirkby are now thick with trees. Houses backing onto them get leaves in the gutters and moss on the north slopes, and we clear and check both.
Listed buildings flagged early
Sixteen listed buildings sit in the Kirkby Cross conservation area alone. If yours is one of them, we tell you before quoting so listed building consent can be sorted first.
"In Kirkby we're asked to replace a few broken tiles on 1930s semis quite often, and when we get up there we usually find the rest of the slope flaking the same way."
From the Kirkby-in-Ashfield jobs Roof Repairs Mansfield has taken on
How a Kirkby-in-Ashfield 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 check what the roof is made of first, because in Kirkby that varies so much. On older stone buildings we look at the pantiles, mortar and lime pointing; on the semis and terraces we check tile condition across each slope, the felt, and the battens from inside the loft.
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
In Old Kirkby that means matching pantiles or slate, lime mortar and traditional detailing. In the town it's more often new tiles and battens on a worn slope, rebedded ridges, or a flat roof re-covered. Either way, we show you photos of the finished job.
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 Kirkby-in-Ashfield.
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 Kirkby-in-Ashfield
Kirkby's best spots are mostly green ones, and two of them grew out of land the town's industries once used.
Portland Park
Known locally as the Quarries, this local nature reserve off Lindley's Lane sits on an old magnesian limestone quarry that was filled in during the 1950s. The Dukes of Portland gave the land to Kirkby from 1910. It has woodland, ponds and meadows, a café, and the remains of the 1819 railway embankment.
Find it on Google Maps : Portland Park
Kingsway Park
Laid out in 1930 on a grazing field locals knew as Sixteen Acre Field, sold to the council by Catherine Hodgkinson of Kirkby House. The 9-hectare Green Flag park has stone archways at its Hodgkinson Road and Kingsway entrances, a bandstand, bowling green, sports pitches and the Acre Café.
Find it on Google Maps : Kingsway Park
Annesley Old Church
The Grade I listed ruin of a fourteenth-century church, just south of Kirkby beside Annesley Hall, home of Mary Chaworth, whom the young Lord Byron loved. Byron and D. H. Lawrence both wrote about it. Ashfield District Council finished making it safe to visit in 2012, with Heritage Lottery money.
Find it on Google Maps : Annesley Old ChurchKirkby-in-Ashfield on the map
about 15 minutes from our yard on Sandy Lane, NG18 2LT. Planning applications here go to Ashfield 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 Kirkby-in-Ashfield
The biggest price difference in Kirkby is between old and new. Work on a stone farmhouse or a pantiled barn in Old Kirkby takes longer, because reclaimed pantiles and lime mortar take time to source and to lay properly. On a 1930s semi the sums are simpler, and the real choice is between a targeted repair now and a re-roof that ends the call-outs. Flat roofs on extensions vary mostly with the size and the state of the deck underneath. We'll always tell you which option makes sense for the next ten years, not just this winter.
See the price guideRoof repair questions from Kirkby-in-Ashfield
Do I need permission to repair a roof in Old Kirkby?
Kirkby comes under Ashfield District Council, and for straightforward like-for-like repairs you don't need planning permission. Old Kirkby is different in two ways. The Kirkby Cross conservation area has been in place since 1975, so changing materials or the look of a roof there needs the council's say-so. And it holds sixteen listed buildings, which need listed building consent for anything beyond basic repair. The Article 4 direction in that area is about the stone boundary walls rather than roofs. Annesley, just south, is a separate conservation area with its own rules.
Why are the tiles on my Kirkby-in-Ashfield semi flaking?
Most likely they're original or early replacements that have reached the end of their life. Clay and early concrete tiles absorb water, and decades of freezing and thawing split them into layers. Once a few are flaking, most of the slope is usually close behind. Patching the worst ones buys time. If a lot of the roof is affected, a re-roof with new battens and breathable membrane is normally the better use of money.
My outbuilding has old clay pantiles. Can you repair it without replacing everything?
Usually, yes. Pantiles can be lifted, sorted and relaid, with cracked ones swapped for reclaimed tiles that match in colour and size. If the battens have rotted we replace them, and if the building is listed or in the conservation area we stick to traditional materials throughout. A sound pantile roof done this way should outlast a cheap replacement, and it keeps the building looking like it belongs in Old Kirkby.
Do you work in Annesley, Nuncargate and Kirkby Woodhouse too?
Yes. They're all part of our regular patch, along with the rest of Kirkby. The stock varies from older stone and brick cottages to post-war semis and new estates, so we price every job from what we find on the roof rather than from a rate card. The survey is free wherever you are in the area, from Annesley Woodhouse to the farmhouses up by the Cross.
Stone barn or 1930s semi, we'll look at it properly
Ring us or book a survey online. We'll come out to Kirkby, Annesley or Nuncargate for free, tell you what your roof is made of and how it's doing, and give you a fixed written price for the repair or re-roof it actually needs.