Roofing in Sheffield

The roofs of Sheffield

Sheffield is a hilly city on the eastern edge of the Pennines, and its roofs know it. The western suburbs climb towards hills of 600 metres and take the wind and rain first; the eastern side down the Don valley is lower and calmer but floods, as it did in 2007 and again in Storm Babet in 2023. The first industrial workforce lived in brick back-to-backs and court housing roofed in slate in Walkley, Crookes, Heeley, Sharrow, Attercliffe and Park, and the Victorian and Edwardian suburbs that followed, Nether Edge, Broomhill, Crookes, Hillsborough and Meersbrook, are still natural slate on brick with a stack on every party wall. Nail sickness is the everyday failure: the slates are fine, the nails have gone.

Between the wars the city built around 28,000 council homes, more than most cities managed: Parson Cross and Shiregreen alone had nearly ten thousand, with Arbourthorne, Shirecliffe, Wisewood, the Manor and Wybourn beside them. After the war came Park Hill, now listed and being renewed, and Gleadless Valley's four thousand homes on the slopes. Most of those houses are still under their first concrete tile roof, which is why the council has just started a multi-year pitched roofing programme on its own stock, stripping and re-covering with new felt, battens and tiles. The owner-occupied houses on the same estates need the same work.

The prestige end is the south-west: Ranmoor, Dore, Fulwood, Ecclesall and Endcliffe, with large Victorian villas under Welsh, Westmorland and occasionally stone slate, and 38 conservation areas across the city where like-for-like materials are expected. Whether it is a single slipped slate in Crookes or a full re-roof in Shiregreen, the fixings, lead and ridges have to be specified for a city where the weather arrives over a hill.