Slate Roofs in Dublin

Keeping a Period Terrace Under Slate, the Way It Was Built

Much of the older housing in Dublin, including the red-brick terraces around Ranelagh, was roofed in natural slate nailed to battens, often with no underlay at all. The slate itself can outlast several sets of nails, so the usual failure is nail sickness: fixings rust through and slates start sliding out one after another. Lead valleys, parapet gutters and shared chimney stacks add their own weak points.

When slipped slates appear across the whole roof rather than in one patch, re-slating is the lasting answer. We strip the roof, fit breathable membrane and new battens, and relay sound original slates where they can be saved, making up the shortfall with matching reclaimed or new natural slate. Fibre cement slate is a lighter, lower-cost alternative where matching the original is less important.

Terraces share roofs with neighbours, so we take care at party walls and where your slates meet next door's. Not every slate roof needs stripping, either: where the slates are sound and only some have slipped, we refix them with clips as part of a smaller slate job. Lead in the valleys and around the stack is renewed rather than patched once it has split or thinned.