Church roof rosemary tile patching

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This Rosemary tiled roof in Glasgow had been tiled with a cheaper Rosemary tile substitute. Rosemary tiles are hard and brittle and do not rot. They will sometimes snap and drop off, but they do not weather away. These tiles had, in huge numbers, rotted, as you’ll see in the five pictures below.

The picture below gives an overview of the entire roof. If you come back to this picture once you’ve seen those at the bottom of the page you will see quite a difference.


Zoomed in a little closer – you start to see the damaged areas more clearly now.


The roof looks a little like someone has been using it for target practice, but it’s just down to weathering. We have never seen a Rosemary tiled roof in this condition before. It’s really bad.



This picture was taken up on the roof. As you can see a great many of the tiles have almost completely rotted away, and generally the pitch is a mess.


The following pictures were all taken during the contract.

You will see smashed tiles mixed in with brand new patched tiles. These were all patched eventually. It’s like this because we are part way through the work. See the pictures at the end of the page for the roof in its completed condition.


All of the following pictures were taken once tiling had, finally, been completed.

Please note that there are still some small corners missing from old tiles. The remit was to patch defective tiles and make the roof watertight, not to patch every single tile with a small broken corner, as this would have meant replacing twice as many tiles and it was decided that this was not economically viable at the time (it basically would have made the job twice as expensive for very little practical benefit).


These last few pictures were taken from ground level once all the access equipment had been removed from the roof.

Trade skills at height. All Scotland covered.