Two more projects that needed natural slate tiles to match perfectly with the history of the buildings have found the solution in slate from Welsh//Slate’s Penrhyn Quarry.

More than 6,400 of the company’s Heather Blue tiles have been used in the £6.5million restoration of one of Greater Manchester’s oldest buildings, the Grade I listed Ordsall Hall in Salford that has been closed since February 2009 while the restoration work, to the walls and interiors as well as the roofs, has been in progress. It is due to re-open at Easter.

The slate from Penrhyn Quarry in North Wales was used to replace 600m² of the roof as a perfect match to the original.

The building dates back to the mid 14^th century and retains architectural elements from Medieval, Tudor, Stuart and Victorian periods.

Lancashire-based distributors Yates & Co supplied the tiles to roofing contractor George Haydock.

Welsh//Slate’s tiles have also been used to roof a 300-year-old former windmill in Anglesey, Wales, as part of a renovation and extension project to convert the building into a private residence.

Roofing contractors Greenough & Sons, based in Anglesey, used a range of sizes in random lengths to recreate traditional roofing.

John Greenough, a Director, says: “Relatively small local slates were required in order to form the intricate detailing to the main cone and sweeping curve of the extension. The main cone was technically relatively straightforward, compared with the problem of blending a low-pitched convex roof slope, through a concave sweep into a higher pitch roof.

“We achieved this in a weather-tight and visually pleasing way by using the larger slates on the lower-pitched section and then sweeping these gradually into smaller slates into the higher-pitched section. This, while at all times maintaining critical side-laps and head-laps.”