Shingles

Where by shingles we mean neither the complaint that older people are prone to, nor the stuff you get on beaches, rather the small wooden tiles said to roof the spires of churches in Sussex. I think the spire left, in Bury, the one on the Arun, is one such.

Which left me with two problems to ponder in idle moments, like 0530 this morning.

First, given that you cannot have bent shingles, in the way that you can certainly mould bent tiles, what to they do about the edges? As far as we could see, the shingles were just butted up against the two sides of the edge, leaving a small gap for water ingress in the middle. Is it small enough that natural ventilation can deal with the small amounts of water involved?

Second, what about woodworm and other pests which older wood and timber is prone to? It sticks in my mind that shingles are all the thing in North America, but you do not get woodworm there because the cold winters kill them off and they never got established. But what about here?

Do you treat the shingles before you put them up and them have them sprayed again at 10 year intervals? Which sounds rather expensive, more expense than the impoverished church of today would want to put out on maintenance.

Which leads to a third problem: where can I find a roofer who knows all about this sort of thing? Would that be quicker than trying to get bing or google to cough up the goods?