6
BCD Special Report on
Historic Churches
19
th annual edition
Hand-cut Welsh slates laid to diminishing courses on
the Church Institute, an Arts & Crafts building of 1912
by Herbert Luck North in Llanfairfechan, North Wales
Machine-cut Welsh slates on a mausoleum of 1863 by Charles Hansom at Perrymead Catholic Cemetery, Bath
Repairing
Clay-tiled and
Slated Roofs
Jonathan Greenough
T
here is
evidence of the use of slate,
stone and clay tile roofing materials in
Britain dating back to Roman times.
Although for much of the early medieval
period thatch of one form or another
predominated, by the 12th century the most
important buildings tended to be roofed in
more permanent materials once again. Church
and cathedral architecture in particular
demanded roofing materials of the very highest
quality, and slate, stone and fired clay fixed
to timber battens or sarking boards quickly
emerged as the standard roofing system from
the later Middle Ages to the present day.
Nationally, the appearance of roofs varied
widely, from large stone slabs in the lake
district, to the smaller rough stone-slates of
the Cotswolds, from the fine blue and purple
slates of North Wales, to the green-hued
slates of Edinburgh and Cornwall, and from
the plain clay peg tiles of the South East, to
the pantiles of Lincolnshire and Humberside.
Detailing too was affected by the materials
used as well as by local traditions, until the
advent of the canals and then the railways
brought access to new ranges of materials.
Slate
Prior to the mechanisation of Britain’s slate
quarries and the laying of the railway systems
in the early 19th century, natural slate was
generally produced in varying sizes which
provided a ‘random’ slate roof. This meant
that all sizes produced by the quarry in the
