WELSH SLATE RANKED HIGH IN THE NAMING STAKES
7 June 2023
"By the strike of his hammer without the King's aid
A Lady or Countess or Duchess is made
Yet high is the station from which they are sent
And all their great titles are got by descent
And when they are seen in a palace or shop
Their rank they preserve and are still at the top."
Verse quoted in an article on Penrhyn slate quarries in Bradshaw's Journal, Volume 2 1842.
It is some 90 years since the practice of calling different roof slate sizes by the titles of female aristocrats was lost to posterity after many centuries.
Although roofing slates per se continue to be named after the area or quarry from which they are mined, the different sizes (and there were dozens) were first given the titles of female aristocrats from the late 1730s.
This practice was commonly thought to have been introduced by General Sir Hugh Warburton, the former owner of Penrhyn Quarry in North Wales, as now owned by Welsh Slate. Others believe it was by the quarrymen themselves.
The names of the larger, imperial-size slates are (length x width):
Empress – 26” x 16”,
Princess - 24″ x 14″,
Duchess - 24″ x 12″,
Small Duchess - 22″ x 12″, offers excellent coverage with 13 slates/m2,
Marchioness - 22″ x 11″,
Wide/Broad Countess - 20″ x 12″, popular and versatile size,
Countess - 20″ x 10″ (the name also refers to 20″ x 9″ and 18″ x 12″),
Wide/Small Viscountess - 18″ x 10″, extremely popular size,
Viscountess - 18″ x 9″ and 16″ x 12″,
Wide ladies - 16″ x 10″ (maybe not PC but possibly the most popular size!),
Broad ladies - 16″ x 9″,
Lady – 16” x 8”,
Small Lady - 14″ x 8″, a popular choice for Victorian terraced houses,
Narrow Lady - 14″ x 7″, not as common as the wider 14″ sizes.
It is not really known why the different slate sizes were given these names. Perhaps to appease the land-owning nobility at a time when the Industrial Revolution was helping to take slate production from a cottage industry to one of worldwide significance, and the ambitious among the masses were beginning to make their own fortunes.
But it was during this time that the use of slate as a roofing material really took off, aided by the introduction of coastal shipping, canals and railways, which enabled Welsh slate to be transported to customers throughout the UK, and beyond.
Penrhyn slates pioneered the naming practice as Welsh Slate’s Penrhyn Quarry at the time was the largest in the world, employing hundreds of men, quarrying hundreds of tonnes of slate every day.
Its place in the history books was further assured in 1801 when Penrhyn opened a tramway linking the quarry to its own port at Bangor, the first slate quarry in the world to do this. This particularly increased its profile internationally due to overseas shipments. Competitors basically had no choice but to follow suit.
However, the naming practice began to fade out in the 1930s when the BSI decided to formally adopt imperial sizing that ranged from 36” x 20” down to 10” x 6”. Then metrification in the 1970s dealt the final blow, although the names have lived on in some quarters, even if they are not officially recognised.
Quarries continue to produce a large range of sizes, with even random or diminishing sizes (which reflect the origins of slating, with every slate being a different size) supplied.
