Three generations on rooftops.
Aedificamus tecta — we build roofs.
Eastfield Roofworks has been re-roofing old houses in this corner of Essex since the workshop opened in 1987. We're a family business — small, regional, and slow on purpose.
It started with one barn and a borrowed ladder.
Officina antiqua — the old workshop.
George opened the workshop in 1987 because the regional roofers he'd apprenticed under were retiring and the work was leaving with them. He'd watched too many cottages get re-roofed in the wrong colour slate by crews who'd never set foot in the village.
Two of his sons came on full-time in '06. The grandkids are now picking up tools at weekends. The same crew finishes the same job — that's the whole pitch.
5
People who go up the ladder. Not a number we plan to grow.
30
Mile radius from the workshop. We don't travel further — distance dilutes the work.
1987
The year George signed the lease on the barn. Same address now.
612
Roofs we've completed since opening. Records kept in the green book on the workshop shelf.
Three of us, plus whoever's apprenticing.
Familia tectoria — the roofing family.
Crews change. Subcontractors come and go. We don't. The same three people who survey your roof are the ones who lift it.
Right now there's George, his sons Tom and Peter, and an apprentice on rotation. Five hands, never more, never less.