Today the Modern Roof tile is made of Concrete, plastic and some even still clay but where did it all start?
Fired roof tiles are found as early as 3000 BC in Lerna, Greece.
The earliest finds of roof tiles in archaic Greece are documented from a very restricted area around Corinth, where fired tiles began to replace thatched roofs at two temples for Apollo and Poseidon between 700 and 650 BC. a Big issue back in the day was with so many thatched roofs around, if a fire broke out it normally spread from house to house via the roofs.
Quickly growing in popularity, roof tiles where used for a large number of sites around the Eastern Mediterranean, including Mainland Greece, Western Asia Minor, and Southern and Central Italy. Early roof tiles showed an S-shape, with the pan and cover tile forming one piece. They were rather bulky affairs, weighing around 30 kg a piece. Being more expensive and labor-intensive to produce than thatch, their selling point was their greatly enhanced fire resistance, which might have been to expensive for home owners then but gave desired protection to the costly temples.
The spread of the roof tile technique has to be viewed in connection with the simultaneous rise of monumental architecture in ancient Greece. Only the newly appearing stone walls, which were replacing the earlier mudbrick and wood walls, were strong enough to support the weight of a tiled roof.
Production of dutch roof tiles started in the 14th century when city rulers required the use of fireproof materials as a security requirement. At the time, most houses were made of wood and had thatch roofing, which would often cause fires to quickly spread. To satisfy demand, many small roof tile makers began to produce roof tiles by hand. Many of these small factories were built near rivers where there was a ready source of clay and cheap transport.
This is how tiles started off and has grown in popularity up to today where concrete roof tiles are now even cheaper o manufacture and are just as strong and durable as the older tiles.
If you have are looking at buying concrete roof tiles and you are in the Mpumalanga region.
Don’t hesitate, give us a call.