Roofers in Scarborough

The roofs of Scarborough

Scarborough grew as a spa and then a railway resort, and its housing shows it. The Georgian houses are red brick under slate; the great Victorian terraces on South Cliff and the Esplanade, many built in the 1830s and 1840s and long since converted to hotels and holiday flats, are brick and render under slate; and tighter Victorian and Edwardian streets fill Falsgrave, part of it a conservation area since 1985 with Georgian terraces at Victoria Place, and the ground behind the two bays. Inland the post-war estates at Barrowcliff and Eastfield, planned in the late 1940s and built through the 1950s over some four hundred acres, are red brick and concrete interlocking tile.

The tradition on this coast is clay pantile, the covering of the whole eastern seaboard, with stone slate on the Moors to the north and Welsh slate on almost everything Victorian. The resort core is being appraised as a conservation area in its own right, and natural slate and traditional detailing are expected on the terraces. The former council stock passed to Yorkshire Coast Homes and then Beyond Housing, which has run rolling roofing programmes across Scarborough, Whitby and Redcar in recent years, a sign of the age the estate roofs have reached.

The sea is the roofing problem. Scarborough gets coastal gales on five to ten days a year, cold winds straight off the North Sea, sea fret in spring and salt on everything. Slipped slates, lifted ridges, verges stripped of mortar and corroded nails, clips and flashings are the everyday calls after a blow, and every fixing we put on a roof here is stainless or coated for the salt.