Huthwaite grew with its industries. Its population was about 500 in 1800 and began to grow when Hucknall Colliery, a drift mine at the bottom of Blackwell Road, opened. In 1877 a second mine, New Hucknall Colliery, employed 500 people. By 1912 the workforce had passed 1,300, though hosiery had become the main industry by then. A Cooperative Wholesale Society factory made hosiery products and was a major employer of women, while the colliery employed the men. Most of the mines closed in the early 1980s, New Hucknall among them.
That history is real, but it does not tell us what any single roof is made of. A house built to serve a growing industrial village could have almost any covering by now, since roofs get re-covered. The survey therefore looks at the roof itself. It checks the covering, the battens, the condition of the underlay where we can see it, and the pitch.
Older roofs can be less forgiving to work on, and a covering that has been on for decades may crack when lifted. We allow spares for that, and the written quote says so. If the slope carries a rooflight already, the survey also looks at how well the existing flashing has coped. Lead, zinc and modern flashing kits all age differently, and a unit that has leaked at the corners tells us something about the covering around it. We would rather find that at the survey than discover it on the day, and the fixed quote reflects what we found.
Inside the roof space we look for signs of damp on the rafters near an existing window, a sagging ceiling board, and gaps in the insulation. Each of those changes the plan, and each is far easier to deal with when the opening is already being made.
