Stone roofs:

Here we illustrate and discuss stone roofing in historic and contemporary use. Our page top rooftop photo may look like slates, but this is a stone roof, not slate.

We mean literally, stone, cut either in giant slabs or stone cut into tiles that might be mistaken for gray slate, but are of different mineral composition. These are stone roofs, not slate roofs.

Stone Roofing Examples, Ancient and Old Stone Roof Designs

While our page top photograph shows a modern cut stone roof, our photo at above left points out that the earliest stone roofs often used a single huge stone slab (photo at left), set atop a stone or wood or earthen structure. In this photo the stone roof slab is no longer in use but has been preserved along a hiking trail above Molde, Norway.

[Click to enlarge any image]

Where particular geology made it easy to split stones into large slabs or where such flat stones were produced by nature, they formed a natural building material.

Our photo of a stone tower roof (above) represents the transition between the megalith stone slab roof used (we guess) from Paleolithic times to modern cut stone roofing. Large stone slabs, many several feet across, but split thinner than the slab at above left, were used to form a random stone slab-tile roof on this antique building tower.

Antique Stone Roof Details

Moving right along from paleolithic times to examples of very durable stone roofs of more moden vintage we take a look at buildings just a few hundred years old.

Shown above and in closer detail below is a stone-roofed inn in Wolvercote, Oxford in the U.K.

And below we see how the roofer sealed the stone roof at the building's gable-ends.

Modern Stone Roof Tile Details

Our photo (above left) shows a typical modern stone roof design. Flat stones are quarried and cut into scalloped, diamond, rectangular, and other regular shapes and applied using methods similar to slate roofing.

However as our photo of stone roof tile thickness suggest above, these roofs are usually even heavier than slate and require a substantial supporting structure.

Our photos show a minor surface delamination of a stone roofing tile (above left) and a chipped stone roof tile (above right).

These are cosmetic defects. Provided the fasteners and supporting structure remain intact, this roof may last for 100 years. About that black fungus, lichens, or algae on the stone roofing in our photos above?

This website provides un-biased articles about many common roofing materials, installations, inspection, defects, roofing repairs, and products.

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Continue reading at STONE CLEANING METHODS or select a topic from the closely-related articles below, or see the complete ARTICLE INDEX.

Or see these

Recommended Articles

• DEBRIS STAINING on ROOFS
• SLATE ROOF INSPECTION & REPAIR - slate is the most common type of "stone" roofing used in Europe & North America.
• SNOW GUARDS & SNOW BRAKES

Suggested citation for this web page

STONE ROOFING at InspectApedia.com - online encyclopedia of building & environmental inspection, testing, diagnosis, repair, & problem prevention advice.

Or see this

INDEX to RELATED ARTICLES: ARTICLE INDEX to BUILDING ROOFING

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Citations & References

In addition to any citations in the article above, a full list is available on request.

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