Shirebrook · NG20
Roof Repairs In Shirebrook
Sharing a chimney, a gutter and a leak with the house next door in Shirebrook?
Chimney, gutter and urgent roof repairs on the colliery terraces and estates of Derbyshire's side of the border
Shirebrook went from a farming village to a pit town in about five years, and the roofs show it. When the colliery shafts went down in 1896, houses were thrown up as fast as men arrived, terrace after terrace on one pattern, with stacks and gutter runs shared between neighbours. That's still the biggest thing about roof repairs in Shirebrook: very little stops at your boundary. A cracked flaunching on a party stack wets two bedrooms, and a gutter that sags outside one door floods the brickwork outside three. We repair the bit that's failed, explain how it affects next door, and give you a price that names exactly what's included. Shirebrook is in Derbyshire, but we're only around thirteen minutes away.
Book a free roof survey in Shirebrook
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 Shirebrook
Itemised fixed prices
about 13 minutes from base
Who does the work
Over the county line, same way of working
Shirebrook is in Derbyshire, but only just, and its Model Village terraces have the same coalfield roofs found across the border. Chris, who is local and has been roofing since he was a teenager, has spent over 20 years getting to know them.
Shared stacks and joined gutters make a repair more involved, and the team take whatever time it needs. A roof is watertight before they pack up. They're proud to work for a business that puts the customer first.
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 boom town in a decade, and the Model Village that came first
The 1891 census counted 567 people in Shirebrook. Ten years later there were around 6,200. The Shirebrook Colliery Company began sinking two shafts in 1896 under the mining engineer Arnold Lupton, and the workforce arrived faster than anywhere could house them. Some families spent their first months in tents and huts in the fields. The company's answer was the Model Village, half a mile from the pit, and by the summer of 1897 the local paper reported about 150 houses built and some 420 more planned. They came with bathrooms and sculleries, which was generous for a colliery house in the 1890s. The listed 1908 school on Central Drive was built to serve them.
The pit lasted almost a century and closed on 30 April 1993. The town struggled after that, and in the mid-2000s Sports Direct built its headquarters and warehouses at Brook Park on the old colliery land. The housing still runs on the 1890s plan, though. Most Model Village terraces are now on their second or third covering, often done one house at a time by different firms, so a single row can carry four tile types and three heights of ridge. Unlike New Bolsover's model village, Shirebrook's isn't in a conservation area. Owners have more freedom as a result, and plenty of roofs here show how that freedom has been used.
The roof repairs Shirebrook needs most
Chimney Repairs
Most Shirebrook terraces have a stack shared across the party wall, and the side nobody looks after lets the whole thing down. We repoint, reflaunch and redress the lead on both faces, and we'll talk to next door about splitting the cost if you'd like us to.
See the service : chimney repairs in Shirebrook
Emergency Roof Repairs
When water is running into a Model Village back bedroom, we make it safe first with a tarpaulin, temporary flashing or reset tiles, then come back for the permanent repair once the price is agreed. On a shared terrace roof we check the neighbouring loft as well.
See the service : emergency roof repairs in Shirebrook
Guttering
Long terrace gutter runs here often pass through four or five owners, with a mix of cast iron, black plastic and grey plastic along the way. We level the whole fall to the downpipe, so the next house along doesn't end up taking your water.
See the service : guttering in ShirebrookWe also do every other service on the menu in Shirebrook, from fascias to full re-roofs.
What matters on a Shirebrook roof
Most homes in Shirebrook are joined to other homes. That changes how a roofer should survey, quote and work here.
Party walls taken seriously
Before we lift anything at a party wall, we look at how the neighbouring roof is fixed. That way your repair doesn't leave a gap on their side, or theirs on yours.
Bolsover rules, not Mansfield's
Shirebrook's planning and building control run through Bolsover District Council. We work to that council's process and forms, not the ones used across the county line in Nottinghamshire.
Mixed roofs tied in neatly
Where one house was re-roofed in concrete interlocking tiles and the next still has the old covering, the joint between them needs proper detailing. Too often it gets left as a mortar fillet that cracks within a couple of winters.
Back lanes planned for
Plenty of terraces here back onto narrow lanes. We plan where the ladders, skip and scaffold will go before the job starts, so nobody's bin day or parking gets blocked without warning.
Neighbours priced in when it helps
If the stack or gutter you share with next door needs the same repair, we can price both houses on one visit. Splitting one scaffold between two homes is usually the biggest saving on a terrace.
"On Shirebrook terraces we often find the leak a customer calls about actually starts on next door's half of a shared stack, so it's rare for us to survey one side without looking at the other."
From the Shirebrook jobs Roof Repairs Mansfield has taken on
How a Shirebrook 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 look at the terrace as a whole from the lane: the stack, the gutter run and where the tile type changes from house to house. Then we go into your loft and look along the party wall for damp staining, light coming through, and old repairs.
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
Typical Shirebrook work is a shared stack repointed and capped, lead flashings redressed on both faces, or the join between two different roof coverings remade with a proper soaker or a lead saddle. Gutter runs get relevelled across the boundary.
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 Shirebrook.
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 Shirebrook
There's one landmark in the town centre worth stopping for, and two good places to walk just over the parish edge, both former estates or pit sites themselves.
Shirebrook Mining Memorial
This is the centrepiece of the rebuilt Market Place. The bronze sculpture by Peter Walker shows a miner working the coal face, with a mother and child standing above him. It stands about 4.3 metres high on a stone-clad plinth. A group of former Shirebrook miners raised the money for it, and it was unveiled on 30 April 2023, thirty years to the day after the pit closed.
Find it on Google Maps : Shirebrook Mining Memorial
Poulter Country Park
Just north of Shirebrook at Langwith. This was the spoil tip of Langwith Colliery, which closed in 1978. The tips were landscaped in 1988 into 84 hectares of woodland and wildflower meadow. Waymarked trails climb to a viewpoint with a sculpture called Top of the World, and on a clear day you can see Lincoln Cathedral.
Find it on Google Maps : Poulter Country Park
Hardwick Hall and Hardwick Old Hall
A short drive west of Shirebrook. Bess of Hardwick built the new hall in the 1590s, and it has so many windows that people still repeat the old line, more glass than wall. It belongs to the National Trust. Next to it stands the shell of the Old Hall she was building at the same time, now looked after by English Heritage.
Find it on Google Maps : Hardwick Hall and Hardwick Old HallShirebrook on the map
about 13 minutes from our yard on Sandy Lane, NG18 2LT. Planning applications here go to Bolsover 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 Shirebrook
In Shirebrook, the biggest factor in the price is usually how much of the job crosses onto next door. Repairing one half of a shared stack is cheap, but if the other half is failing it won't last, and a scaffold put up for one house costs nearly the same as one for two. Narrow back lanes can add time for carrying materials and getting a skip in. Mixed coverings along a terrace mean more cutting and detailing where tile types meet. On the plus side, most of these houses are two storeys, so many repairs can be done from a ladder or a small tower without full scaffolding.
See the price guideRoof repair questions from Shirebrook
Who deals with planning and building control for roof work in Shirebrook?
Bolsover District Council, because Shirebrook is in Derbyshire, even though the postcode is NG20 and the town looks towards Mansfield. The Model Village isn't a conservation area, so repairing a roof or re-covering it in similar-looking materials is normally permitted development and needs no application. Raising a roof, adding a front dormer or working on a listed building such as the Model Village school would need consent. Re-covering more than a quarter of a roof also comes under building regulations, which go through Bolsover's building control. We sort that out as part of the job.
My Shirebrook terrace shares a chimney with next door. Who pays to fix it?
Usually it's split between the owners, since a party stack belongs to both houses, but your deeds can say otherwise. In practice, if one side is failing, the other side's room is often the one getting wet. We survey both faces, photograph them, and give you a single price you can show your neighbour. If they don't want to go ahead, we can still repair your side properly. We'll just be clear about what will happen if their side is left.
Can you come out to Shirebrook even though it's in Derbyshire?
Yes. Shirebrook is about thirteen minutes from our yard on Sandy Lane, closer than some parts of Nottinghamshire we cover, and the county line makes no difference to us. The only thing it changes is which council deals with your paperwork. Surveys, guarantees and prices work exactly as they do in Mansfield, and if water's coming in we'll treat it as just as urgent as a call from round the corner.
Why is there a crack along the join between my roof and next door's?
That's very common in the Model Village. It usually means the two houses were re-roofed at different times with different tiles, and someone filled the gap where they meet with mortar. Mortar can't cope with the movement between two different roofs, so it cracks and water runs in along the party wall. The proper fix is to remake the joint with lead, or with a tile detail that lets each roof move on its own. It's a day's work in most cases, not a re-roof.
Book a Shirebrook roofer who'll check both sides of the stack
Tell us your street and what you've noticed: a stain by the chimney breast, a dripping gutter, a tile in the lane. We'll survey your roof and the neighbouring bits that affect it, then give you a written price. You'll know how much of it is your bill and how much is shared.