Roofers in Pontefract

The roofs of Pontefract

Pontefract grew round a castle rather than a mill. Ilbert de Lacy built it after the Conquest, Richard II died there in 1400, and three Parliamentary sieges left the town impoverished before demolition began in 1649. The castle is magnesian limestone from the Cadeby Formation, the same stone that built York, Beverley and Conisbrough, and an old sandstone quarry survives on its northern flank. The town and its surroundings hold 66 listed buildings, one of them Grade I and eight Grade II star, and it still makes liquorice, with Pontefract cakes produced here to this day.

For a roofer the important thing is the geology. Pontefract sits exactly where the coalfield meets the magnesian limestone. Wakefield's design code places the town itself in the red brick coalfield, but the limestone belt begins on its doorstep at Darrington, Knottingley and North Elmsall, where creamy-yellow limestone walls are paired with clay pantile roofs. Stone flags and Welsh or Westmorland slate remain the traditional coverings named across the district. That makes Pontefract the point where pantiles enter the local vocabulary, which they do not further west, and matching a weathered pantile to a roof that is half original is a job in its own right.

The residential picture is dominated by Chequerfield, a district made up mostly of council housing that was described just after the Second World War as the largest council estate in Europe, built for people in poor housing and for returning soldiers. Coal shaped the outer districts very late, the last colliery closing only in August 2002. The town is the lowest and driest of our West Yorkshire towns, on a low ridge at roughly 69 metres with around 779 millimetres of rain a year, so the roofing problems here are age and detailing rather than exposure.