Date: 13 Sep 2009 Comments: 0

So, I have the castle, now to get started, the first job was a roof the castle is in 3 sections (I will do a plan to show this later) for the purpose of work we are doing each section one at a time, the first section as we call it, is actually the youngest section of the castle, built in 1694, its internal  measurements are approx 11 meters by 5.

One of the reasons for starting here is this section is the only section that had a partial roof, the roof supports that you would find on a conventional building would be A frames, on our castle these are quite unique, they are more like a arched (bottom of a boat) type affair (see photos) this design is unique to this area, two of these where in a bad state of repair, the others where fine, after much deliberation we decided that we could eliminate one and repair the other.

Because the chateau is a listed building we could not use the conventional French tiles with flats and rounds, it had to be rounds on top and bottom, this can be a pain as using rounds on the bottom is prone over time to slide down the valeach (a planking put over the main structure of the roof ready to lay the tiles) luckily when we consulted the local builders merchants, they now do a round under tile that as a lug at the back that sits on battons to stop the old problem of slipping.

One of the biggest problems facing us on the roofing,  because the castle as a moat to three sides it was not possible to scaffold, after much scratching of heads and coffee we decided the simplest solution was to put the grenier (loft) floor in and use this as a platform from which to do the roof. This we did and it worked well.

It is important for me to keep as much originality as possible, some of the surrounding medieval buildings, the lodgy etc have  adopted a more modern style, completly flat roofs, short overhang and guttering, we kept the croakied lines of the old oak beams and kept the traditional large overhang and no gutters.

Finally we had a roof!