What is happening on the roof anyway and why do we have scaffolding now inside the church as well as outside?

Progress on the roof repairs

Starting at the beginning…… when the Listed Places of Worship: Roof Repair Fund announced their scheme for grants for roof work in November 2014, we thought this was a great idea and  envisaged a small piece of work for All Saints to repair the valley between the clergy vestry and the chancel and on the south aisle.   These were critical elements in our quinquennial survey of the church fabric and it was good to have the Roof Fund “trigger” to get going. 

When we won the award, the Church Commissioners who have responsibility for repair work on the chancel came and looked at the chancel roof and said it would be better to do the whole roof – and they would pay.   So our project grew. 

As you can see from the position of the scaffolding the contractors are working on the whole of the roof from the vestry door to the north slope of the Lady Chapel roof.

Photo 1 - View of stripped eaves of the Vestry. The timbers are in good condition.

With any major repair project in a very old building you only discover what the position really is when you start work.   In this case we needed to take the tiles off to see what was happening underneath.

   

Some of what we have discovered is good – for example the timbers are in much better condition than we expected and some is bad. 

  

The bad is the strength of the rafters and their depth.   It is bad in two ways – firstly it means the roof is weak and secondly it means that we cannot fit additional insulation in the roof.  We will still have the benefit of the sarking board which will provide some insulation (the flat board you can see being laid on top of the rafters). 

  

In order to strengthen the roof, there will be “collars” installed at high level between the joists.  This is why we currently have the scaffolding in the Lady Chapel.  We will also have to strengthen the vestry roof and put scaffolding in there later.  Apparently the Diocese can give us permission quite quickly for this work to proceed as a variation to the faculty.  There was a safety issue in the Lady Chapel which is why that area had to be cordoned off with no warning, as half of the roof still had the weight of all the tiles.  In the vestry there is no such problem there are no tiles on the roof!

Photo 2: Detail of stripped roof slope, showing slender and poor condition of firring timbers fixed to the upper face of the common rafters.

Budget wise we are roughly on target with things we don’t need to do, like replacing lots of timbers, and things we cannot do, basically the insulation, making up for the need for the collars to strengthen the roof.

A big thank you to all those especially John Smith and Jo Asplin who have coped with the sudden demands of contractors, and everyone for managing with the inconveniences in churchyard and church at the moment. 

Anne King - 9th March 2016