Slipped & Broken Tile Repairs In Newcastle
Found a tile on the lawn, or a slate sticking out of the gutter?
Refixing, re-nailing and matching replacement slates and tiles on terraces, semis and estate houses across Newcastle upon Tyne and Tyne and Wear
One slate in the garden is rarely one slate. On a Jesmond terrace it usually means the iron nails holding the rest have rusted to nothing. On a Longbenton semi it tends to be a concrete interlocker that cracked years ago and finally gave up in a gale. We get up, work out which of those you have, and fix it with slates or tiles that match the ones already there. Free inspection, price in writing, and a straight answer on whether it is a patch job or a slope job.
- Welsh slate, clay and concrete tiles all matched from reclaimed or current stock
- We tell you if the slope is nail-sick rather than quietly refixing one slate at a time
- Loft checked for daylight and wet battens, not just the outside
- Written guarantee on the refixing work
Get A Free Roof Inspection
Tell us what is going on and we will ring you back to arrange a look.
Why Tiles Come Off Newcastle Roofs
Different houses, different failures. A Victorian slate roof in Sandyford does not go wrong the same way a 1970s concrete tile roof in Newbiggin Hall does. These are the six we meet most.
Nail Sickness On Welsh Slate
The slates on a Jesmond or Heaton terrace are often the originals from the 1890s and still perfectly sound. The iron nails holding them are not. They rust through, the slate slides, and the one next to it follows a month later. If three have gone from the same slope, the rest are not far behind.
Cracked Concrete Interlockers
Post-war estate roofs in Longbenton, Westerhope and Newbiggin Hall were tiled with concrete interlocking tiles that are now fifty or sixty years old. Frost gets into the surface, a hairline crack opens across the tile, and the first strong easterly snaps it. Replacements are easy to get; matching the weathered colour is the trick.
Clay Tiles On 1930s Semis
Gosforth, Kenton and Fenham have streets of 1930s semis with small clay plain tiles. They are lovely to look at and they laminate: the surface flakes off in layers after decades of wetting and freezing. A laminated tile looks fine from the drive and lets water straight through.
Wind Lift Along The Verge And Eaves
Tiles at the edges of a roof take the worst of the wind. On exposed rows in Whitley Bay and North Shields we regularly find verge tiles sitting loose because the mortar bedding has gone and nothing else was ever holding them. Storm Arwen in 2021 cleared a lot of those out in one night.
Broken By Boots
Someone fitted an aerial, cleaned a gutter or installed solar, and walked on the tiles to do it. Concrete interlockers crack across the nib, plain tiles crack in half. The damage is always in a line from the ladder to wherever they were working, which makes it easy to spot once you know to look.
Rotten Battens Underneath
Sometimes the tile is fine and the batten it hangs on has rotted. We see this where felt has been torn for years and the battens have sat damp. The tiles sag in a row, then one drops. No point renailing to soft timber; the batten needs replacing first.
How A Tile Repair Actually Goes
Six steps, and the first two are the ones most people skip. We do not.
Walk The Slope
We get up and look at the whole roof face, not just the gap. We are counting slipped and cracked pieces, checking how the neighbours of the missing tile are fixed, and pressing on the slates to feel for loose ones you cannot see from below.
Check The Loft
Daylight through the roof, wet patches on the felt, and battens that give when pushed all tell us whether this is a one-tile problem or something wider. Ten minutes in the loft saves a lot of guessing.
Match The Material
Welsh slate gets reclaimed Welsh slate in the same size and thickness. Clay plain tiles get a reclaimed or current match for colour and camber. Concrete interlockers get the same profile so they actually lock. We bring samples to the roof and hold them next to the originals.
Quote In Writing
You get a price for the refix and, if the slope is clearly nail-sick, a second price for refixing the lot. The cause goes on the quote in plain words so you know what you are paying for.
Fix It Properly
Slipped slates are refixed with lead or copper tingles where that is right, or the course is lifted and re-nailed where the nails have gone. Broken tiles are replaced, not glued. Battens get swapped where they have rotted, and torn felt is patched under the repair.
Clear Up And Hand Over
Broken pieces come down with us, the gutter below the repair is cleared of the debris that was already in it, and you get photos of the finished work along with the written guarantee.
A Refix That Holds, Or We Come Back
Refixing slates is quick to do badly. A slate pushed back up under the one above with a dab of mastic will stay put until the first proper wind, and then it will be in the garden again with the mastic still attached. Every slate and tile we refix is mechanically held, with a tingle, a nail or a clip, and the work carries a written workmanship guarantee that runs for ten years.
We also give you the honest picture of the slope. If a 1900s roof in Heaton has lost four slates to rusted nails, the other several hundred nails are the same age and the same metal. We will say so, in writing, with a price for stripping and re-nailing the slope and a price for replacing the roof covering if that is nearer the mark. You decide what to do with that information.
Three Things To Ask Before Anyone Refixes A Tile
Can They Match It?
A grey concrete tile dropped into a roof of red clay plain tiles will leak, because the two do not sit together, and it will look terrible from the street. Ask what they are going to use and where it is coming from. On a Welsh slate roof the answer should be Welsh slate of the same size, not a fibre cement substitute hoped to pass from the pavement.
How Are They Fixing It?
The honest options for a slipped slate are a tingle (a strip of lead or copper hooked under the slate's bottom edge) or lifting the course and re-nailing. The dishonest option is adhesive foam or a squirt of silicone. If the word sealant comes up when you ask how a slate will be held, ask them to leave.
Did They Look In The Loft?
The underside of the roof tells you whether the felt is torn, the battens are soft and the problem is wider than one tile. A roofer who has quoted without going inside has priced the symptom. That is fine for one tile knocked off by an aerial fitter. It is not fine for a sixty-year-old roof shedding tiles every winter.
Refix A Few, Re-Nail The Slope, Or Re-Roof?
The right answer depends on how many have gone, how old the fixings are, and what the rest of the roof is doing. Here is how the three options stack up on a typical Tyneside roof.
| Refix the slipped ones | Strip and re-nail the slope | Re-roof | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | A handful of slates or tiles, fixings elsewhere still sound | Nail-sick slate roof where the slates themselves are good | Laminated clay, crumbling concrete, or felt and battens gone |
| Guide cost | £120 - £600 | £1,500 - £4,500 per slope depending on size and access | Priced separately, see our roof replacement page |
| How long it lasts | Years, if the rest of the slope holds | Decades, with the original slates back on new nails | The life of the new covering |
| Disruption | A morning, ladder or short tower | Scaffold, two to five days | Scaffold, a week or more |
| Reuses the original slates | Yes | Yes, with replacements for breakages | Usually not, though good slate can be salvaged |
| Where it goes wrong | When it is the fourth refix on the same slope in two years | If the battens turn out to be rotten once stripped | If the roof did not need it and a re-nail would have done |
The Tile That Was Not The Problem
This is the edge of a concrete interlocking tile lifted at a wall abutment on a job in Newcastle. The owner had been told the tile had slipped and needed pushing back. It had not slipped. It was sitting exactly where it was laid, over a cement fillet that had cracked away from the wall, with the lead underneath it bent and split. Water was tracking down the wall behind the fillet and showing up as a damp patch two rooms away.
Tiles get blamed for a lot. When a slope sheds tiles near a chimney or a wall, the tiles are often fine and the lead flashing or the mortar at the junction is what has let go. Along the top of the roof it is the same story: a ridge tile rocking on dead mortar will shift the course beneath it and look like a tile fault from the ground.
So we photograph what we find before touching anything. If the tile is the fault, you see the crack. If it is not, you see what is, and the quote describes that instead.
Around one in three slipped slate call-outs we attend in Jesmond and Heaton end up as a conversation about the whole slope, because the nails that let go are the same age as every other nail on that roof.
Based on the enquiries and jobs handled by Huckleberry Roofing Ltd. A rough picture of what we see, not a formal survey.What Slipped And Broken Tile Repairs Tend To Cost
Refixing a few slipped slates or swapping a couple of cracked concrete tiles from a ladder is at the bottom of the range. Replacing a run of clay tiles with a rotten batten underneath, or anything needing a tower for safe access, is at the top. VAT included, and the figure is in writing before a ladder goes up.
£120 - £600
See The Full Cost GuideSlate And Tile Questions From Tyneside Homeowners
Can you match the slates on my Jesmond terrace?
What is nail sickness and how do I know if my roof has it?
Is a tingle a proper repair or a bodge?
My concrete tiles are from the 1960s. Can you still get them?
Do I need planning permission to replace broken tiles?
The tiles came off in a storm. Will my insurer pay?
Slipped & Broken Tile Repairs Across Tyne And Wear
Newcastle upon Tyne is home turf, and we cover the rest of Tyne and Wear from there. Pick your area for the local page, or just ring if you are somewhere in between.
One Slate Today Is Three Next Month
Ring us before the next easterly. We will get on the roof, match the slate or tile, and tell you honestly whether the slope needs more than a refix. Free inspection, written quote.