Slate: An Ancient Roofing Material

Last week we looked at Pantiles, an import from the East, this week we look West to Wales and take a glance at a much more ancient roofing material: slate.

Slate has been put to all sorts of uses, from billiard tables to cheeseboards to gravestones - but when it comes to roofing, there are two properties that make slate particularly suitable material. First, when ‘cut’ by an expert knapper, slate will split along its lines of foliation forming large flat sheets. Secondly, these sheets have a very low capacity for water absorption. This means that they are effectively waterproof.

Slate has a long history of being used as a roofing material in the UK. In Wales, Scotland and the West Country. Where slate can easily be mined, it has kept the rain out of buildings for centuries. However, with the heavy weight of the slabs of slate and transport options limited to the horse and cart, if you lived more than a few miles from a slate quarry, you were unlikely to be able to afford a slate roof. Slate was cheap and plentiful where you could dig it out of the ground but very rare here in sandy Norfolk.

The Industrial Revolution changed all that. The steam-powered locomotives and barges were soon transporting slate tiles all over the country to roof the cheap housing in the rapidly expanding industrial towns. Around this time, all along the eastern swathe of Great Britain we were starting to replace the traditional thatch and reed roofs with the S-shaped clay Pantiles imported from Holland, but some slate got through and it can even be seen as a later addition to some of Norfolk’s historic churches. St Mary’s at Denton is a particularly good example where the original Mediaeval flint building has been supplemented by a 16th Century brick tower and a much more modern roof of slate.

At RG Leverett Ltd, we have a range of new and used tiles and slates for all your roofing needs and budgets. Contact us on 01603 418818 or enquiries@roofsuk.co.uk and we will be happy to chat with you about the various options available to you.