# Repairing a slate roof
Author: Hana Sato
Author URL: https://demofolio.superblog.click/author/hana-sato/
Published: 2026-06-20
Category: Restoration
Category URL: https://demofolio.superblog.click/category/restoration/
Meta Title: Repairing a slate roof · Folio
Meta Description: How a two-hundred-year-old roof was stripped, sorted and relaid with the same slates, in the same order.
Tags: roofs, slate, restoration
Tag URLs: roofs (https://demofolio.superblog.click/tag/roofs/), slate (https://demofolio.superblog.click/tag/slate/), restoration (https://demofolio.superblog.click/tag/restoration/)
URL: https://demofolio.superblog.click/repairing-a-slate-roof/

![Slates on an old roof](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1548254689-2d7a62331d96?ixid=M3w3OTAzOTJ8MHwxfHNlYXJjaHw2fHxzbGF0ZSUyMHJvb2YlMjB0aWxlc3xlbnwxfDB8fHwxNzg4NjM0NzI2fDA&ixlib=rb-4.1.0&w=1600&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop)

A slate roof does not wear out. Its nails do. After two centuries the iron has gone and the slates slide; the slates themselves are fine and will be for another two.

## Stripping

Every slate off, numbered, stacked by course. The roofer's apprentice spent a week with a paint pen.

## Sorting

The broken ones out, about one in twenty. Replacements from the same quarry, which still works the same bed, so the colour matches once it weathers.

## Relaying

Copper nails this time, which will outlast the slates. The same diminishing courses, larger at the eaves and smaller at the ridge, which is how the old roofers did it and why the roof looks the way it does from the lane.

It took six weeks. From the ground you cannot tell anything happened, which is the whole point.


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