Roofers in Redcar

The roofs of Redcar

Redcar began as a fishing hamlet trading with the larger village of Coatham next door, became a resort when the railway arrived in 1846 and a steel town when Dorman Long built its works. The Coatham conservation area, designated in 1988, holds the old one-row settlement of East Coatham and the best of the Victorian planned development that followed: terraces of villas and houses, detached villas on Kirkleatham Street, mid-Victorian Trafalgar and Nelson Terraces in white Pease brick, and two-storey Victorian and Edwardian terraces along Coatham Road. Red Barns is listed Grade II*.

The roofing history is written in the appraisal. From the mid 1600s bricks and tiles came from the Low Countries and were then made locally, giving the orange-red brick and pantiles that are still characteristic of the wider area; from the mid 1800s grey, blue and black slate from Wales and Cumbria gradually replaced both thatch and most of the pantiles, so today the conservation area's roofs are predominantly natural slate, with clay pantiles surviving on Red Barns and a pair of Arts and Crafts houses, and man-made slates and tiles considered to detract from the character. Dormanstown, begun in 1917 as a garden village for steelworkers with steel-framed Dorlonco houses, and the post-war Lakes Estate and Westfield are concrete tile.

The setting is what makes a Redcar roof different. Coatham's own appraisal records that windblown sand has always been an issue, driven by north-westerlies from the shore, and that its cottages were built as a barricade against the keen northern wind. The Met Office recorded one of England's highest hourly wind speeds at South Gare, coastal gales come on five to ten days a year and salt reaches everything. Beyond Housing, which owns much of the former council stock, has run roofing programmes here and is giving Grangetown's homes new roofs and insulation. Redcar was in the North Riding until 1974 and sits in the ceremonial county today, but it is run as a Tees Valley authority and we say so plainly.