Nationwide Roofing Southern offers expert roofing services across Arundel. With over 50 years of experience, we provide high-quality roofing solutions with free surveys and quotes.
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Arundel is a steep town of tall buildings on narrow streets, and that has a consequence people rarely connect to roofing: a great many roofs here have not been properly looked at in a very long time. Three and four storey Georgian and Victorian property, streets that climb sharply, frontages with no room to stand and often no rear access at all. Getting up there is a job in itself, so it does not happen, and problems that would be caught early elsewhere run quietly for years instead.
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We prioritise timely project completion with minimal disruption to your home or business, ensuring you receive dependable roofing solutions when you need them.
Our fully accredited and qualified team adheres to the highest industry standards, ensuring safe, professional roofing installations and repairs.
We use premium materials to create long-lasting, weather-resistant roofs that protect your property for years.
We keep every system in house rather than fitting the one we happen to specialise in, so the advice is about your roof and not about our kit:
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A new roof starts underneath the covering. We strip back, check the battens, underlay and rafters, and put right whatever the old roof was hiding before anything new goes on. On a tall Arundel property that is frequently a good deal, because a roof that has been out of reach for decades has usually been left to get on with it. Everything is laid to the manufacturer’s specification, or to whatever has been approved on a listed building.
Roofs get replaced when the covering has aged out rather than after one failure. On a building where access is difficult there is a practical argument for doing the whole roof at once rather than in stages: the expensive part is getting up there safely, and doing that repeatedly for separate small jobs costs more over time than doing it properly once. We set that out honestly so you can weigh it rather than discovering it later.
We trace a leak to where the water is getting in rather than to where it shows on the ceiling, and on a four storey building those can be several floors apart. Valleys, parapets and lead details behind the front elevations account for most of what we find here, precisely because they are the parts nobody can see. Small repairs done early cost far less than what follows, which on a tall property includes a good deal of interior damage on the way down.
Flat roofs around Arundel are mostly on rear additions, dormers, and the back extensions that period property has accumulated over the years, often at a level that cannot be seen from anywhere. We install and repair felt, single ply, EPDM and GRP fibreglass systems, set the falls so water reaches the outlets rather than standing, and detail the upstands properly. An unseen flat roof holding water is a common find on a first proper survey.
Natural slate and clay tile through the older town, concrete interlocking on the later housing. Where existing material is sound we salvage and re-lay it, which on a listed or conservation area property is usually what any consent expects. Where new is needed we match size, profile and colour as closely as we can source, and weathered material never matches new exactly, which matters here because the roofs are visible from higher ground.
A green roof needs a deck that will carry the loading, the right falls, and a waterproofing layer designed to sit beneath a growing medium. Around Arundel the practical candidates are outbuildings, garages and modern extensions rather than historic fabric, and because roofs here are overlooked from higher ground the appearance from above is a genuine consideration. In a conservation area consent comes first. We survey before specifying anything.
Hot melt is a monolithic waterproofing system, laid hot so that it bonds completely to the deck with no seams or laps to fail. It earns its place where a leak would be expensive and disruptive to trace, and where the waterproofing sits beneath something else: a podium deck, a roof terrace, a car park or the build up of a green roof. Because the membrane bonds fully to the substrate, water cannot track between layers, so a defect stays where it happened rather than surfacing somewhere else entirely.
That last point matters most on exactly the sort of roof Arundel has plenty of: hard to reach, rarely inspected, and expensive to get up to. A system where a fault stays put is worth more on a roof nobody visits often.
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The town climbs from the river towards the castle, so buildings sit at different levels and one property frequently looks down onto the roof of the next. Much of the centre is Georgian and Victorian, a great deal of it listed or in a conservation area, roofed in slate and clay tile with parapets, valleys and lead details that are largely invisible from the street. Below and around it sit later housing and the properties out towards the water meadows and the Arun valley.
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Nationwide Roofing Southern has been roofing across the South East for over 50 years. We are members of the National Federation of Roofing Contractors and we are CHAS accredited, with full public liability and employer’s liability insurance in place on every job and a certificate available on request. Our system warranties cover labour, materials and damage. Surveys and quotes are free, come in writing, and carry no obligation.
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If an Arundel roof is staining a ceiling, or is simply one of the many here that nobody has been up to in years, the survey costs nothing. On a tall property that means looking from inside as well as outside, because the loft frequently tells you more than the street ever will. We put what we find in writing, with a price against it.
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Arundel sits in the Arun Valley a few miles inland from the Sussex coast, with the South Downs to the north. Roofs here see a mix of valley and downland pressures. Westerly and south-westerly autumn gales funnel up the Arun Valley and over the Downs, testing ridge tiles, slate clips and chimney pointing on exposed properties. The river setting brings additional damp on north-facing slopes. Salt-related corrosion is reduced compared with the coast but still a factor on the most exposed roofs. Frost damage to cracked pointing on older properties is the main winter risk.
Yes. Arundel has a designated conservation area covering most of the historic town centre, with one of the highest concentrations of listed buildings in West Sussex including the cathedral and castle estate. Conservation area rules and listed building consent are the homeowner’s responsibility and can restrict roof shape, slope, tile material and rooflight placement. We recommend checking with Arun District Council’s planning team before any roof work begins, and we will work to whatever specification the council approves.
Arundel’s historic core runs to Georgian and Victorian townhouses with natural-slate pitched roofs and decorative parapet detailing. Older streets include timber-framed and tile-hung cottages with clay-tile or peg-tile pitched roofs. Edwardian and inter-war housing across the wider town uses clay tile. Newer estate housing on the town edges uses concrete interlocking tiles, with hot melt or EPDM on flat extensions. Many older roofs need careful tile matching when replaced. Each comes with a different maintenance pattern.
After a strong westerly or south-westerly up the Arun Valley, look for slipped, cracked or missing slates and tiles, dislodged ridge or hip tiles, debris in valley gutters and parapet boxes, and damp patches on top-floor ceilings or chimney breasts. Lifted lead flashing around chimneys and tall Georgian parapets is common on older Arundel townhouses. If you spot anything, get it covered or assessed before the next weather front arrives.
Because getting up there is genuinely difficult. Tall buildings, steep narrow streets, frontages with nowhere to stand and often no rear access mean that inspecting a roof properly is a job with a cost attached rather than something anyone does casually. So it gets deferred, and deferred again, until something appears on a ceiling. The practical result is that when we do finally survey one of these roofs, we usually find several small things that have been developing quietly rather than one new fault.
As much as possible without going up, then properly when it is warranted. A great deal can be established from the loft, from adjacent higher ground, and from the pattern of what is appearing inside the building. That will usually tell us whether there is a specific fault worth reaching. Where a roof does need to be inspected at close quarters, on a tall property that means proper access rather than a ladder, and we will say so up front, because it is a cost you should know about before you agree to anything.
Often the important half. From the loft you can see daylight through the covering, tears and gaps in the underlay, staining and dark tracks down the rafters showing where water has been running, damp or compressed insulation, and rot at the wall plate where a problem has been going on a long time. None of that is visible from the ground and much of it is not obvious from on top either. On a property where the roof is hard to reach, the loft is the most useful place to start.
It changes the access, which is often the largest single variable in the price. On a four storey property the roof work itself may be no more complicated than on a bungalow, but getting people and materials safely to it is a different proposition. Height also means more wind at roof level and a longer route for anything that comes loose. It is worth asking any quote to separate the access cost from the roofing cost, so you can see what you are actually paying for.
Because water travels. It enters at a valley or a parapet, runs along a rafter or down inside a wall, and emerges wherever it first meets something that stops it, which on a tall building can be two or three floors down and several metres across. That is why a repair made directly above a stain so often fails: the stain marks the exit, not the entry. On these properties tracing it properly is most of the work and the actual repair is frequently small.
Not necessarily, and we would rather say so than take the easy sale. A slate roof left alone for a long time is often in better condition than an equivalent roof that has been repeatedly patched with the wrong materials, because nobody has had the chance to make it worse. What usually needs attention on a neglected roof is the mortar work, the flashings and the valleys rather than the covering itself. The only way to know is to look, and looking costs nothing.
Or speak with our friendly team:
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At Nationwide Roofing Southern, we are members of the National Federation of Roofing Contractors (NFRC) and we are CHAS accredited. Our accreditations reflect our commitment to high-quality service, strict safety standards, and lasting results. Whether it’s repairs, installations, or maintenance, you can trust our skilled team to deliver reliable roofing solutions that meet industry expectations.
