I was visiting an old Victorian hospital yesterday and looking out over the roofs. I noticed that the slates, although a bit random in sizes had been graded so that the larger ones were at the eaves end of the roof and smaller ones toward the apex of the roof.
It got me wondering if this is for some sort of visual effect or some other reason.
Father Ted moment coming up: the small ones are further away! :)
Just my thoughts:
The larger slates with less joins will have far more water flowing over them than those at the top. As one starts at the bottom when slating, some of the broken slates can be cut down and used as smaller ones as one progresses up the roof . It looks good .
It does look terrible otherwise. (all equal is OK)
The message from "John" contains these words:
ISTM that it would be totally impractical to do it the other way round. :-)
The situation you describe is typically found with sandstone roofing slates. I don't think I have seen real slate roofs with diminishing courses. It might be something to do with the type of stone. I imagine real slate is easier to turn into identical roofing slates than sandstone. Real slate certainly makes thinner slates.
I guess they were some sort of stone as there seemed to be a bit of a pattern/grain. They were slightly greenish.Edges seemed chiselled.
The slate roofs here in the Lake District have diminishing courses maybe not as much as some of the sandstone roofing further south. A quick look at my Outbuilding (1800) would suggest bottom course slate dimensions at least 2x top course. Width doesnt seem to reduce as much as length.
The message from robert contains these words:
Shows how unobservant I am. I do visit the Lake District but not to look at the buildings :-)
Here in Keighley I have stone slates on my roof. Difficult to get close enough to measure those in situ but I have some spare stacked round the back of the barn and they range from 32" depth to 18" depth. Widths vary greatly. IIRC on the roof there are a few at least 3 feet wide. Almost impossible to wrestle with when I did some remedial work 25 or more years ago.
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