THE NEW OLD ROOF

by Hereward of the Graigian Society

It is the tradition on the Lleyn Peninsula to cement the slates of the old roofs together to protect them from the strong winds. There are still many examples of them left, especially on the old barns. The slates on these roofs are unique because many of them are hand-cut. Some of them are incredibly thick and the one-holed type have the characteristic rounded top.

The Lleyn Peninsula is 30 miles long and juts out at an angle from the mountains of Snowdonia, North Wales. Here in this forgotten land lie some of the most breathtaking views in the country. Very much part of the beauty of these views are the little cottages tucked into the landscape, and part of the beauty of the old cottages are their roofs. Sadly, many of these are being replaced by neat machine cut slates of a uniform colour and snake-like texture. The old, chunky, lichen dotted slates are just chucked!

What we Graigians have done is replace the roof of our byre re-using the slates that have blown off and replaced the ones that got broken by ones we carefully saved and second-hand ones bought at 20p each. A freak December storm blew a great hole in our byre, so the first job was to remove all the remaining slates and stack them carefully ready to be cleaned. We organised a 'Community Working Holiday' for this purpose and gained two willing helpers - more than enough for this worthy task. With the three of us, that made five; but working in a heatwave made the job only possible for a few hours a day. While I, Hereward, peeled off the slates and handed them down to Patrick, Isla, Anelog and Sebastien started to chip off the cement and old mortar. Hand axes were used for this purpose and Isla soon discovered, as she chipped away, that she could tell a good slate from a dud by the sound it made when struck and whether the cement would come off easily or not.

As in a great many of the old roofs the slates were different sizes. The bigger, longer ones at the bottom and gradually smaller as you go up, until at the very top tiny ones were used. This is not only aesthetically pleasing but it meant that all the raw slate could be used in the quarries. Once our slates were cleaned they could be stacked according to size. The biggest were 14 inches long, then 13", 12", 11", 10" and even 9" and smaller. This was a maddening task, trying to work out the smoothest system for arranging them. I must mention at this point that we are not professional builders but monks, artists, environmental campaigners and psychologists and this was the second roofing job we had done. John Nicholson, architect, builder and Green activist, showed me the technique of slating a roof two years previously.

The next stage was treating the good rafters, replacing the rotten ones and nailing down the battens. After a spell in London, attending to business, we returned in September to finish the job off with Patrick's help. Now we were in earnest, wanting to finish the work before the winter and nailed the slates in with a vengance. I took the extra precaution of cementing the slates in over the side walls and the bottom to prevent any wind from lifting them. Steadily the new roof grew up the byre, like the scales of some enormous fish. What made our work unique was that we were using a whole variety of slates from different places and the most remarkable thing happened when it rained; all the colours of the different slates glowed in varied hues. This was a blessing. Apart from spacing the battens according to the different lengths of slates the other puzzle was fitting in three windows. These windows were three sheets of laminated glass panels, one from an oven, the others from two 'Morris Minor' doors. Each window had to be treated like a large glass slate and be fitted in with all the other slates. The total cost was 150 pounds for all our work on the roof inclusive.

Within eleven days the job was completed and we finished off with a 'topping off' ceremony, where we drank elderberry wine and splashed some on the new roof. To fill a small gap at one end of the ridge of the roof I cemented in a large pebble and then Patrick matched it with another one at the other end. We were of course thrilled with our enterprise and labour but even more so were the locals who had previously viewed us with comic suspicion, were now visibly impressed with our handiwork, and the good word spread. Maybe in time more 'gingerbread' roofs will appear on the Lleyn!

The Graigian Society - 10 Lady Somerset Road, London NW5 1UP.

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