The extension to The Lodge residential home was nearing
completion in December. It can be seen
from outside the Mount Radford Inn, looking along College Road. Have a look at its roof – there are vents in
small gables built into the slope of the tiles.
Now compare it with the roof of your own home – what is different and
why?
Although the basic concept of a roof is a simple one – to
make a building weatherproof – there are a multitude of different styles in a
neighbourhood such as ours. Ask a child
to draw a house, and they are fairly certain to give its roof a slope at left
and right, identifying the difference between the vertical house walls and the covering. Such a roof is hipped, but is only one of
several popular designs in the neighbourhood.
Hipped (or simply hip) roofs limit the possibility for attic space
compared with those where the roof only slopes on two sides (pitched and gable
roofs). Look at the older houses with the
latter roof style and you will often find a window set into the angle of the
two slopes, suggesting an attic or loft room.
Then gables can be created at right angles to the ridge,
over a projection in the frontage of the house, or as a decorative
feature. The strange animal above the
pharmacy in the village is on such a gable, but it is a gable with a most
unusual variation. Stop and have a look
(if it is safe to do so) next time you are passing. Behind the beast, there is a gable, and
behind that the roof ridge rises above that of the building, exaggerating the
height of the façade. A case of
architectural bragging!
From the early years of the twentieth century, skylights
began to be fitted into some houses – windows replacing tiles or slates and
providing illumination into the otherwise dark roof spaces. If your first thought is to call a skylight a
“Velux” you are using a commercial name (like “Hoover” and “Biro”) to describe
all similar products. Velux originated
in Denmark but is now a worldwide company.
Modern roof materials can be so efficient that it is necessary to
provide vents to prevent mould.
Flat roofs appear in St Leonard’s, not just in modern
architecture, but in a small number of older properties – especially blocks of
flats. Developments in technology mean
that they are generally more waterproof than the notorious leaking flat roof of
Castle Drogo. (Sir Edwin Lutyens,
architect of Drogo, created many houses whose tiled roofs were an integral and
eye-catching part of the design, rather than an afterthought.) The ingress of water through roofs causes
many problems in other types of building; Victorian builders of churches
delighted in providing problems for successive clergy and congregations by
concealing gutters behind brick or stone facades, creating gulleys which fill
with debris – and are very difficult to reach and clean. (Rather than use scaffolding, these days, inspectors
increasingly look at church roofs with drones.)
Old Matford, in Wonford Road, supposedly the oldest
inhabited private house in Exeter (cathedral houses in The Close are older) was
probably once thatched; there remain a few thatched properties in the city, but
none in this neighbourhood. On one side
is the Church of the Latter-Day saints, whose roof is in the saltbox style,
with two sides of unequal length. Almost
opposite is the Nuffield Hospital which has a form of mansard roof, with the
top floor windows surrounded by the same material used for the roof
covering. More typical mansard roofs are
found associated with the two storey prefab houses erected after the Second
World War in Countess Wear and Heavitree.
And, additionally, in the main block of The Lodge, in Spicer Road, which
takes us back to where we started.
Take a look around the neighbourhood; what other shapes of
roof can you find?
(Printed in the January - February 2018 issue of Neighbourhood News)
Keywords: St Leonards, Exeter, history, geography, beauty
