Roman Roof Tile
A roof protects a building and its inhabitants from heat, cold, rain, wind and snow. It needs to be both strong and light and also easy to mend. A tile is a thin slab of material, fixed and arranged in overlapping rows to form the roof.
This original Roman tile is made out of stone, and has been especially prepared by a stonemason skilled in carving stone into thin sections without splitting or cracking. Each tile was made to the same size, to allow uniformity when covering a large roof space. The underlying structure of a roof is a series of wooden beams creating a frame to which the tiles can be attached. Each tile has a hole at the top through which a nail can go, thus fixing the tile to the beam.
This tile is quite rough on the surface. You can still see the marks of the stone mason's tools where the excess stone was chipped away. The colours of the tile - greys and yellows - indicate that it is sandstone, a type of rock formed out of compressed sand. Two bright spots of yellow lichen remain on the tile, telling us which side faced the weather.
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Dimensions: Length:15.5cm Width:12cm |
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