Huddersfield’s housing is Pennine stone. The terraces in Lockwood, Moldgreen, Paddock, Marsh and Lindley have stone-slate roofs, often with the original heavy timbers underneath, and the installer checks these before confirming panel count. The town’s Victorian villas in Edgerton (a conservation area) and Gledholt have big, complex roofs with several pitches, which usually means a good south-facing slope somewhere even if the front of the house faces north.
Outside the town the Colne and Holme valleys, Slaithwaite, Marsden, Honley, Holmfirth, climb steep valley sides. On the sunny side of a valley a stone terrace can outperform a flat suburban semi because nothing shades it; on the shaded side a north-facing roof may not pay at all, and we will say so at the survey rather than quote. The 1960s to 1990s private estates at Almondbury, Kirkheaton, Fenay Bridge and Lepton are the flattest, simplest roofs in the area.
North Kirklees is different housing again. Dewsbury, Batley, Mirfield and Heckmondwike have red-brick as well as stone terraces, large inter-war estates and a steady run of new-build on former mill sites. These are the Wakefield-style roofs of Kirklees: plainer pitches, concrete tiles, modern wiring, one-day installs.