I love a good roofing adventure. 

When
my good friend Bob Pringle of Evans Roofing Company, located in Elmira,
N.Y., called and invited me to join the leaders of the National Slate Association and Slate Roofing Contractors Association
on a tour of slate quarries in Wales, I had to say, “of course.”
Without any idea of what I was getting myself into, I knew enough that
the unknown was a critical element of the adventure. 

It turns out the tour, organized by Clay Heald of New England Slate,
was designed to take a small group from the United Kingdom to Wales and
then to Ireland on an adventure of learning — the likes of which defies
comparison. 

This dispatch summarizes the people and places we
visited, what we learned about the U.K.’s roofing industry, the use of
slate in Wales, and the remarkable and resilient slate-roofed buildings
of Dublin. 

London Calling

We started in London, taking advantage of an invitation to join the National Federation of Roofing Contractors for its 2023 U.K. Roofing Awards
banquet. NFRC lays claim to being the largest and most influential
roofing trade association in the U.K., promoting quality contractors and
quality products. 

While we have many competitions for roofing
projects in the U.S., we have nothing compared to the high-energy
production of the NFRC’s U.K. Roofing Awards. The event showcased
roofing and cladding projects in dozens of categories. The grand finale,
the “Roof of the Year” award, was taken home by Stuart Wheeler Roofing
for a beautiful residential slate roofing project in Thurlestone, a
small village in South Devon, England. 

We were able to meet a
number of the roofing contractors receiving awards as well as U.K.
industry dignitaries. I met Matt Downs, an editor who has also been a
fixture in the U.K.’s roofing and cladding industry for years. (It was
good to exchange a handshake after years of occasional emails finally.) 

Matt was kind enough to share his reporting on the awards in his publication, Total Contractor.
Perhaps one of the most striking differences in this awards ceremony
was the inclusion of the roofers, who mounted the stage with their
company leaders to be acknowledged and accept the awards for their
excellent work. Elevating all tradespeople this way is a lesson we would
do well to learn domestically. 

Also attending the U.K. Roofing Awards were leaders of the International Federation of the Roofing Trade, or IFD, known in the U.S. for its affiliation with the National Roofing Contractors Association. Like the NFRC, the IFD’s goal is to advance the interests of the roofing industry within Europe. 

The IFD likewise hosts an annual event showcasing roofing projects and a world championship where young roofers compete within the framework of vocational training in the skilled trades. 

Hopefully,
as the U.S. advances roofing skills training in career and technical
schools, we can send our national champions to the world championship.
The seed of connection was first sewn in 2019 when the Durable Slate
Company became the first U.S. company to win a metal roofing project award from the IFD for its Steeple Square project in Dubuque, Iowa. (Durable’s COO, Gary Howes, and John Chan, Durable owner, were with the group for this tour.)

We
spent our remaining time in London taking in the sights, most of which
were buildings clad with slate roofing. For example, did you know
Westminster Abbey’s steep-pitched roof is covered using Westmorland Green slate? Westmorland Green, quarried in England, is produced by England’s sole remaining slate quarry, Honister Slate. 

I
am also happily able to dispel the myths surrounding English cuisine.
The meals we enjoyed — from the NFRC banquet to countless pubs and
restaurants we visited — were all quite good, and the beer was indeed
cold. 

Wales: Quarry Time

The centerpiece of our slate tour adventure took place in Wales. We started with a visit to the Welsh Slate Penrhyn Quarry,
one of the country’s oldest quarries. Our tour of the quarry, currently
owned by the Breedon Group, was led by Michael Halle, whose decades of
experience in the slate roofing industry provided substantive depth in
helping us understand its role in the Welsh roofing industry. 

Welsh Slate operates the Penrhyn Quarry as well as two nearby quarry sites: at Ffestiniog and Cwt-y-Bugail.
Given the nature of stone as a roofing material, each quarry brings
forth roofing slates that vary in color and characteristics. 

Our
tour included a trip to the “working quarry” as well as a demonstration
of how the stone is cut and cleaved into one of three available
thicknesses of roofing slate. 

We also received an invite to tour
the production facility where stone workers were busy executing the
(mostly) manual process of taking slabs of stone, cleaving, and grading
them into individual pieces before being placed into crates for shipping
worldwide. 

My direct “connection” to Penrhyn slate was the one
slate project I furnished in my hometown of Jacksonville, Fla. The
owners of a new home under construction on the river were so particular
about the materials used for their Georgian mansion they sent their
architect to Charleston, S.C., to find the “perfect” slate for its roof.
My friend, Greg Hageman of Greg’s Roofing in Ormond Beach, Fla.,
performed the installation. 

Most of the slate roofing
professionals on the tour, which included quarriers, distributors,
contractors, and consultants, were well familiar with all the Welsh
Slates. Like me, for most of those on the tour, this was a first-time
visit to the Welsh Slate quarries. 

“I was fascinated by all the
Penrhyn slate roofs early in my career in Charleston, S.C., after
Hurricane Hugo [in 1989]; I even met some Welsh slaters there, so I’ve
always had a fascination with the Penrhyn Quarry,” described John Chan,
owner of the Durable State Co. “Being there and seeing the history of
the quarry and the museum was spectacular for me as I’ve always viewed
getting to Penrhyn as the Holy Grail of slate roofing.”

The slate quarry visit was highly educational, but the visits to Zip World and the Deep Mine Tour
were amazing — an absolute blast. While none of us in the group signed
up for the optional zipline over Penrhyn Quarry, we appreciated watching
pairs of intrepid zippers taking on a nearly one-mile-long experience,
listed as “…the fastest zipline in the world,” which claims participants
can reach speeds up to 100 mph. 

The other option, touring
Penrhyn Castle, seemed the more attractive choice; we Yanks have
ziplines in the U.S. but few castles. The tour was fantastic and framed
through the story of how one man, Edward Douglas-Pennant, would take the
Welsh slate industry to new heights on his way to becoming Baron
Penrhyn — and accumulating significant wealth along the way. 

While
he built this castle, he did not establish Welsh slate mining and
quarrying. His tenure as the steward of the Welsh slate industry was
during the 19th century; Welsh slate extraction can trace its roots back
hundreds of years to when the Romans first entered the area. 

Speaking
of traced back, we learned that much of the slate in this part of the
world is 450 million years old. Don’t ask me about the science behind
carbon dating, but we learned this metamorphic stone is unique and found
in a variety of colors and qualities all over the world. 

I will
note that some of the most unique colors, and indeed some of the best
quality stone, are quarried right here in North America.

A slate
mine? Previously, I had always considered roofing slate as a “quarried”
material, not “mined.” But, in fact, slate is extracted both ways, and
the deep mine tour was another great learning experience. 

We
learned that mining slate in the early days was brutally hard, primarily
manual labor. Transporting the material from below ground to the
surface required mine operators to lay narrow-gauge rail lines
throughout 25 miles of tunnels to bring the stone forth. From the mines,
slate was moved to a port explicitly built for Welsh slate. 

The
mine, like many since-closed quarries throughout Wales and most of the
U.K., has since been transformed into a tourist destination. Wales is
replete with slate quarries that have long since been closed, including
the Dinorwic Quarry, which is the location of the Welsh National Slate Museum.

The
collection of artifacts held at the museum includes the old steam
engines used to move slate from the mountains to the ports. We also
learned how the stone was cut manually into individual shingles, as well
as how slate ridge fixtures were made and used. 

“Although
somewhat sated by age, I was touched by the blood, sweat, tears, and
rewards that went into mining slate at the Ffestiniog site,” said roof
consultant Jeff Levine, a slate and copper roofing expert and associate
principal with Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc. 

“All of
which is captured in each slate shingle placed on the roof, and how far
we have come since the ‘old’ days, and how far we still have to go,”
Levine added.

A last item of interest I’ll share is when Welsh slate production was interrupted during a record-breaking strike,
lasting from 1900 to 1903. The dispute centered on union rights, pay
and working conditions. It was a bitter battle between Lord Penrhyn and
the slate quarry workers, which subsequently ripped apart a community,
changing this part of North Wales forever. 

Ireland Bound

A
relatively short ferry ride across calm seas took us from the north of
Wales to Dublin, Ireland, for the last stop on our adventure. Of course,
we felt obliged to make a requisite pilgrimage to have a proper pint of
Guinness in the capital’s Temple Bar neighborhood, home to its bustling nightlife. (At least Bob and I obliged.) 

Conducting our slate tour were representatives of Lagan Building Products, or LBS,
led by Managing Director Peter Lagan and his associate, Martin. The
highlight of the tour for me was the visit to St. Patrick’s Cathedral,
which received a new slate roof two years prior.

A kiosk inside
the sanctuary made the pitch for contributions to pay for the new roof.
Like the slate mines and quarries of Wales, many historic cathedrals of
Europe are both tourist destinations as much as houses of worship.  

Our
time in Ireland was too brief. Through one of my siblings performing
one of those mail-in DNA tests, I discovered myself to be roughly half
Irish — despite my Italian surname. It was rewarding to experience my
newly discovered ancestral homeland and left longing to see the rest of
the country.

Some Final Thoughts

It
is always good when you can learn a thing or two about the industry you
work in, but it is a blessing to do it with a great group of
professionals. Learning about slate was great, but getting to know my
fellow travelers was the absolute best. 

My interest in slate
roofing goes back a long way, in spite of the fact that I grew up in
Florida, a place with very little slate roofing; perhaps that is why I
am so intrigued. Moving to Atlanta in the mid-1990s finally brought me
into a slate-using market, and the company I worked for and later
retired from had branches in Savannah, Ga., and Charleston, S.C., with
many historic buildings clad with slate roofs. 

Perhaps it’s the
endurability of slate that is so appealing. There’s something about
resilience that is admirable. Materials that possess a classic look and
come with centuries of history are just exceptional. In my view, natural
slate roofing takes its place on the top of the list of steep roofing
systems due to its natural beauty and long history of durability.