Slate and Heritage Roofing in Hunters Hill

Sandstone, slate and a stonemason tradition

Hunters Hill is the oldest kind of roofing problem in the district and the most interesting. The Frenchman Didier Numa Joubert built many of the early houses from local sandstone and reportedly brought out seventy Italian stonemasons to do it, which is why the suburb was once nicknamed the French Village. Vienna at 38–40 Alexandra Street and The Chalet at 2 Yerton Avenue are state-listed. Alexandra Street is still the commercial and civic heart, with Ferry Street, Reiby Street and Woolwich Road running off it. The municipality holds around 650,000 square metres of parkland, including Boronia Park on the Great North Walk and Kellys Bush Park.

A good proportion of those houses are still under genuine slate, and slate is not a tile.

Slate is its own trade

Working on a slate roof is nothing like working on terracotta. The material is brittle, it is laid to different rules, and the fixings and flashings carry more of the responsibility.

• Individual slates are refixed with copper or stainless hooks or clips, not nailed back with whatever is in the bag.
• Lead is dressed properly at chimneys, abutments, valleys and hips. Where old lead is still sound it can often be redressed rather than replaced.
• Walking a slate roof breaks slates if you do not know where to put your feet, so access is planned before anyone steps on it.
• Matching is a real constraint. Slate varies in thickness, size, colour and origin, and a mismatched replacement looks wrong from the street forever.
• Sealant is not a repair on a slate roof. It is a sign that someone was in a hurry.

The conservation rules, in plain terms

The Municipality of Hunters Hill, which is also the council for Woolwich, Boronia Park, Henley, Huntleys Point and part of Gladesville, has firm heritage controls. Complying development is not an available approval pathway inside a conservation area. For genuinely minor work, the council can issue a heritage exemption letter under its local environmental plan rather than requiring a full development application, and the published example is exactly our situation: a slate roof replaced with a new slate roof using the same styles of flashing and ridge capping.

That is good news if you want to keep your roof as it is, and it is the reason a tile-for-slate or metal-for-slate substitution is rarely the right recommendation here. We say that up front rather than quoting the cheaper material and leaving you with the approval problem.

Arrange a heritage-aware inspection

Free inspection, photographs, and a written quote that states the material and the method. Call (02) 9100 0199.

Relevant services: roof repairs including slate and lead work, roof inspections and written reports for sales and insurers, and gutters and downpipes.

We also work in Woolwich, Boronia Park and Huntleys Point next door. Full list on the service areas page.