56 ON THE OLDER FORMS OP 



house with the ordinary sloping roof must have preceded 

 the use of roofing-tiles. 



Before the introduction of pottery tiles, rough stones 

 were used for roof coverings. "In localities which sup- 

 plied laminated stones such as Gloucestershire and Hamp- 

 shire in Britain, the Romans often roofed their buildings 

 with stone tiles fastened on with iron nails" (see tiles, 

 Encyclopaedia Britannica) . Lieutenant-general Pitt-Riv- 

 ers in a communication on an ancient British settlement 

 excavated near Rushmore, Salisbury (Journal Anthropo- 

 logical Institute, Vol. xvn, p. 190), records that "tiles 

 of Purbeck shale, with nail-holes to fasten them by, were 

 also found more frequently in the rich quarter than else- 

 where and terra-cotta tegulse were also found there, but 

 only in fragments and used as pavements, for which pur- 

 pose these tiles were frequently employed elsewhere. The 

 absence of imbrices which are a necessary adjunct in the 

 formation of a Roman tiled roof confirms the opinion that 

 the roofs of the Romano-British village were not tiled in 

 this way. Although the fragments of the tiles show that 

 they had certainly been originally constructed for roofing, 

 their use for a second-hand purpose conveys the impression 

 of poverty, although too much stress must not be laid 

 upon the circumstances." 



It would be interesting to ascertain whether any frag- 

 ments of these tegulae had traces of cement upon them, 

 for we have seen that in Japan, the tegulse well bedded in 

 clay or pointed with mortar may be used without imbrices. 



It was customary in the Middle Ages and up to within 

 recent centuries to use rough-stone tiling. At Broadway, 

 near Worcester, England, one may see a village in which 

 many of the cottage roofs are tiled with small flat stones 

 of the roughest description. These are held to the roof 

 by oaken pins which suspend them on the battens placed 



