C O N T E X T 1 3 9 : M A Y 2 0 1 5 27 JONATHAN GOODE Aspects of copper roofing Raising awareness of the wide variety of copper roofing techniques – many of them developed in the 20th century – may lead to this material heritage being better conserved. For the past decade I have been commuting into London Victoria Station daily. Towards the end of my journey and just after crossing the Thames I pass the Western Pumping Station of Sir Joseph Bazalgette’s great Victorian sewer. It is a most elaborate building for a most common purpose.To me its crowning glory has always been its copper roof: a mansard form with a curved tiled lower slope and shallow-pitched upper slope.The lower part of the mansard is finished in small elaborate copper tiles with a kaleidoscopic patina turning from dark bronze to pale green as the roof curves down. In certain weathers it shimmers with an iridescence. This building set me on my research into the many aspects of copper roofing. My persistence in seeking case studies was rewarded with an invitation to view the building up close during recent repair works. The kaleidoscope I could see on my daily commute resulted from using copper sheet in two ways that departed from those which are commonly used: wood battens and ‘fish-scale’ tiles. There are, as it turns out, quite a number of variations that do not fit into the standard specification handbook. Sheet roofing practice developed out of the ability to form larger and larger sheet sizes through mechanisation of the manufacturing process. By the middle of the 20th century it was standardised to using a sheet two feet wide by six feet long and weighing 16 oz per square foot (0.022 inches thick).When jointed with standing seams, it gives a bay width of 21¼ inches.The modern traditional Western Pumping Station, Victoria, London: in certain weathers the copper roof shimmers with an iridescence. ‘Fish-scale’ tiles
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