Roofers in Bradford

The roofs of Bradford

Bradford is a stone city. The Carboniferous sandstone under it, from rough rock to fine honey-coloured building stone, built the mills, the warehouses of Little Germany and the terraces that climb the hillsides of Manningham, Great Horton, Girlington, Heaton and Undercliffe. Over a third of the city's homes were built before 1919, one of the highest shares in England, so the typical Bradford roof is a Victorian one on a stone terrace.

Those roofs come in two kinds. Until the railways, local sandstone was cut into roofing slates and used almost universally, and stone slate survives across the older parts of the district. From the mid 1800s lighter, cheaper Welsh slate took over, and it covers most of the Victorian terraces and villas. The two sit side by side on the same streets and need different skills: stone slate is heavy, laid in diminishing courses and hung on pegs; Welsh slate is nailed and fails by nail sickness. Saltaire goes further still. In the World Heritage Site the council accepts only reclaimed or new Welsh slate, coursed through to the neighbour's roof, and almost all roof work needs listed building consent.

The estates are the other half of the work. Holme Wood, Buttershaw, Ravenscliffe and Thorpe Edge were built after the war on the edges of the city and are largely concrete tile on their first covering. The 1960s tower blocks along Manchester Road and Otley Road have already been re-clad and re-roofed once. And the height matters: Bradford sits in the eastern foothills of the Pennines with around 870 millimetres of rain a year, and Queensbury and Thornton at over a thousand feet get wind and snow the city centre never sees.