Roof cleaning in Evesham — moss-free for two years, town centre or new estate.

Why Evesham roofs green up faster than the higher ground around them.

Evesham's town centre sits on a horseshoe — a tight meander of the River Avon that loops almost the whole way round the medieval core, leaving the old town on a peninsula that's nearly surrounded by water. It's the geography that makes the place flood: in July 2007 the town had its heaviest rainfall in 200 years and the worst flooding in its recorded history, and back in May 1998 the river came up nearly six metres in a matter of hours. But the same low, wet ground that floods is what wrecks roofs in between the floods. Even in a dry summer the air over the Vale floodplain sits heavy with moisture, and moisture is exactly what moss, lichen and gloeocapsa algae feed on. A roof here carries noticeably more growth than an identical house up on the drier slopes towards Bredon Hill or out on the Cotswold edge.

The wider setting makes it worse, not better. Evesham gives its name to the whole Vale of Evesham — the fertile flood plain that's been market-garden and orchard country for generations, prized precisely because that humid, alluvial ground grows things so readily. What's good for asparagus and plums is good for moss too. The same damp microclimate that fills the Vale with polytunnels and fruit trees keeps a film of moisture on north-facing tile most of the year, and the surrounding villages — Badsey, Bretforton, Wickhamford, Offenham — sit in exactly the same conditions.

You see it most starkly in the old town. The streets running down to the river — the High Street, Bridge Street, Vine Street and the lanes around Merstow Green and the Bell Tower — are packed with old clay, stone and slate roofs standing close together, shading each other for much of the day. Original hand-made tile holds damp far longer than modern materials, and on the shaded lower pitches very little sun ever reaches the surface to dry it out. By the time someone calls us, a black-looking roof near the river is usually a thick mat of moss sitting in the laps, with the gutters already filling from what's washed down.

Out on the estates it's a different roof but the same problem. Bengeworth on the east bank, the Hamptons across the river, and the modern developments at Greenhill, Four Pools and the newer fringes are mostly post-war and modern concrete interlocking tile. Those tiles are textured, which gives spores something to grip, so in this humid basin they mat up heavily — we lift the bulk off by hand from a tower or roof ladder before the biocide goes on. Whether it's a listed cottage near the abbey grounds or a 2010s semi out at Greenhill, the cause is the same Vale damp, and so is the fix.

One thing worth saying plainly: we don't believe in pressure-blasting concrete tile that's already a few decades old. The surface coating thins with age, and hammering it with high pressure takes years off the tile to buy you one clean season. Lifting the moss off by hand and then treating with biocide is gentler on the tile and lasts far longer — which matters when you're looking at a roof that still has plenty of life left in it.

The peninsula, the abbey grounds and the old streets — getting the method right.

Evesham has around 166 listed buildings and a town-centre conservation area built around its medieval grain — the riverside peninsula, the old market streets, and the abbey precinct at the heart of it. The town grew up around its great Benedictine abbey, and although the abbey itself was pulled down at the Dissolution, the survivors still shape the streetscape: the tall Bell Tower, completed by Abbot Lichfield around 1530 only a few years before the monastery fell, and the surviving stretches of Abbot Reginald's and Abbot Chryton's walls. A lot of the roofs in the old core are original clay, stone or slate on old structures, and they need a completely different hand to a modern semi. On these we hand-scrape only, never pressure, because force cracks old tile and drives water into a structure that has stood for centuries by staying watertight.

For listed buildings, cleaning sits in a careful zone. Straightforward removal of biological growth normally doesn't need listed-building consent, because you're not altering the fabric of the building. Anything that touches mortar, lead or the original tile-fixing usually does — and we'll tell you upfront if a job crosses that line so you can speak to Wychavon District Council's conservation team before booking. We keep biocide off lime mortar by sheeting and rinsing the edges, and where old lead flashings have weathered to a soft grey patina we'll usually recommend leaving them rather than scrubbing them back to bright metal, which is exactly the kind of thing heritage officers, reasonably, don't want to see.

It's worth remembering why the old town looks the way it does. Evesham was a wealthy abbey and market town, and the streets between the river and the market place filled with merchants' and tradesmen's houses over several centuries — which is why a single terrace running down towards the Avon can carry three or four different ages and tile types, roofs meeting at odd angles into shared valleys. The listed Regal Cinema on Port Street, a 1930s Art Deco survivor across the bridge in Bengeworth, is a reminder that "listed" here isn't only medieval — there's protected fabric of every era. None of that is a problem to clean, but it's exactly why we survey each property properly rather than quoting a roof we haven't seen.

At quote stage we check whether your property looks listed and glance at the Historic England map before the survey. It costs us five minutes and can save you a planning headache.