Bookshelf

Bookshelf The Pattern of Traditional Roofing Liveryman Gerald Emerton, privately printed, 2018

Gerald Emerton is a long-standing member of the Company and a fourth generation slater and tiler. Downstream, as it were, his grandsons were prizewinners at SkillBuild in 2016! In a long life Gerald has run a roofing company in the north west, worked hands on as a craftsman, and given over fifty public lectures.

This book was clearly provoked or inspired by the author’s perception that writers on architecture and buildings stop concentrating at the gutter line; for every article or comment on roofing there are dozens on brickwork or stonework. Most descriptions of buildings fail to mention the roof. Reading this book should inspire members of the Company to become ‘roof-spotters’ as they travel around England and Wales (Gerald is also the author of The Pattern of Scottish Roofing for those who travel north). Like bird watchers, roof spotters need a good field guide and this book will enable you to tell the difference between a Cotswold random and a Welsh tally.

The structure of the book is based on the material used for the roof covering, and within each material the information is analysed geographically. The reader will learn much about geology, history and economics and acquire a smattering of new terms along the way – for example, slate quarries are known as ‘delphs’ and you ‘delve’ to find the slate. Trade used to be based on the ‘two towns’ rule, since slates are heavy to transport so two towns’ distance from the delph is as far as they went. This meant that each locality had its local slate supplier and the slater commissioned the right number of slates (randoms) and their desired sizes (Farwells, Wivetts and Batchlers included – see the wonderful description of slate sizes on page 66) after carefully measuring the roof he was working on.

This system was overtaken once the large slate quarries in North Wales developed the capacity to supply regularly sized and shaped slates (tally slates) in large quantities and send them around the UK first by sea and the canal system, and later by rail. Welsh tally slates were used in most slum clearance and new towns building work in the 1920s and 1930s.

Slates were then replaced, for volume work, by clay tiles and concrete tiles. The final part of the book deals with clay tiles such as Bridgewater and Broseley.

Although the book is not an instruction manual for tilers, it does contain technical drawings and guidance on how to lay out a roof in the first place (number of laths, spacing or gauge, different sizes of slate or tile required, overlap at top, bottom and sides, torching inside the roof space, fixing problem areas such as valleys and hips) which this reviewer found fascinating.

In conclusion, a visit to any hamlet or town in the country will be enhanced by referring to this guide and trying to spot the origin of the slates and tiles: the book contains numerous photographs of roofscapes and in some cases you can see three adjoining cottages with random slates, tally slates and modern clay tiles.

Christopher Causer

Renter Warden

The Pattern of Traditional Roofing may be obtained direct from the author at a cost of £52.50 including P&P: Gerald Emerton, Glebe House, Acton, Nantwich, Cheshire CW5 8LE