Roofers in Lytham St Annes

Two towns, two different roofscapes

Lytham and St Annes get spoken of as one place and they were built as two. Fylde Council’s built heritage strategy describes Lytham as mid to late nineteenth century villa-scale development with artisan housing and imposing public buildings, and The Avenues as late nineteenth century suburban expansion. St Annes is the later, deliberate one — a planned Victorian resort town on a grid-iron street plan, begun after the St Anne’s Land and Building Company was established in 1874. Its pier opened in June 1885, and the population went from about 1,200 in 1881 to over 15,000 by 1931.

What that means on the ground is a lot of substantial Victorian and Edwardian property with gables, bay windows, chimneys and decorative eaves — the features Fylde’s own heritage strategy picks out as characteristic across its conservation areas. Roofs on this stock are steeper, higher and more detailed than the post-war housing around them, and they have more leadwork in them: valleys, chimney abutments, bay tops, dormer cheeks. That is where they leak.

Sand

St Annes has a problem Lytham has less of, and it is worth naming because it affects roofs directly. Fylde’s sand dunes management action plan records that at St Anne’s dunes large areas of bare sand are causing wind-blown sand to fall onto the pavement, the highway and inland properties, and specifically names the adjacent North Promenade opposite Todmorden Road. Structural warranty guidance for coastal sites lists wind-driven sand clogging drainage systems as a coastal hazard in its own right.

Sand does not behave like leaf debris. It settles in a gutter, holds water against the fascia and works into the joints, and it fills the low point of a flat roof rather than washing to the outlet. On property near the dunes we check the rainwater goods as a matter of course when we are called out for something else, because a surprising share of “roof leaks” here turn out to be a gutter that has quietly stopped working.

Worth knowing for context: the Fylde dune system is estimated to have declined by around 84% since 1839, with losses accelerating after St Anne’s was founded in 1875. A good deal of the town stands on what was dune.

Conservation areas — and why we will send you to the council

Fylde Borough Council has ten conservation areas, several of which cover this stock directly: Lytham Town Centre, Lytham Avenues, St Annes Town Centre, St Annes Road East, and the Porritt Houses and Ashton Gardens area of St Annes. There are three Article 4 directions in the borough — Lytham Conservation Area, Lytham Quays and Lytham Avenues. Fylde has over 200 listed buildings, including Lytham Hall at Grade I.

Here we will be straight with you about the limits of what we can tell you. Unlike Blackpool and Wyre, Fylde does not publish conservation area appraisals with descriptive text — what it publishes are boundary maps — and its built heritage strategy and local plan contain no specific policy on roofs, roof materials, chimneys or rainwater goods. We could not obtain the text of the Lytham Article 4 directions either. So rather than tell you what we think is restricted, we will tell you to check with Fylde Council’s planning team before committing to a covering or an alteration, and we will do that checking with you if it helps.

One thing does apply across the whole area regardless: the Extending Your Home guidance adopted jointly by Fylde, Blackpool and Wyre. Its dormer rules are the same in all three boroughs — a dormer should not normally take up more than 35% of the roof plane, should sit well within the body of the roof and below the ridge, should have a pitched roof in matching tiles or slates, and should not be clad in board or plastic.

What we do here

Also nearby

We cover the wider Fylde from the same base: Ansdell and Fairhaven, Kirkham, Wesham, Freckleton, Warton, Wrea Green, Singleton and Staining, as well as Blackpool itself and the Wyre side — Poulton-le-Fylde, Thornton-Cleveleys, Fleetwood and Garstang.

Your guarantee

Every roof we complete carries a 20 year full written company guarantee on all workmanship and all materials.