Roofers in Cornwall

Roofing in Cornwall

Cornish slating is a craft in its own right, not simply slate roofing done in Cornwall. The traditional method here is scantle slating: random-width slates in diminishing courses, hung on oak pegs and bedded in lime mortar, tightening towards the ridge. Done well it will last a very long time on a building with soft cob or rubble walls; done badly, or replaced with uniform machine-cut slate on a modern batten arrangement, it looks wrong and often performs worse. Delabole has been quarrying slate on the north coast for centuries and remains England's largest working slate quarry, so genuinely local material is still obtainable, which is not true in most parts of the country.

The climate is the hardest part of the job. Cornwall takes the Atlantic full on, with one of the highest driving-rain exposures in Britain, and salt in the air along virtually the whole peninsula. Wind-driven rain penetrates slate laps that would be perfectly adequate inland, which is why traditional Cornish roofs are laid at steep pitches with generous headlaps and often torched underneath. Salt attacks ferrous fixings relentlessly, so nails, clips and gutter brackets that would last decades in the Midlands corrode here in a fraction of the time. Slate roofing ranks second among the services offered by the county's 167 listed firms, which is unusual nationally and entirely expected here.

If you own a period property in Cornwall, the single most valuable question to ask a contractor is what fixings they intend to use. Copper or stainless is not an upgrade on this coast, it is the baseline. Ask also about headlap rather than accepting a standard specification. And in the Camborne and Redruth mining landscape, where World Heritage status applies, check the constraints before altering anything visible.