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Introduction

Introduction

Pantiles are single lapped tiles that are becoming increasingly popular and are renowned for their distinctive “S” profile(s) that creates a series of rolls and troughs to produce one of the most elegant roofscapes available.

The pantile shape is predominant on the east side of England and Scotland as well as areas of the south coast of England and the south-west. This geographical architectural footprint is a legacy of several centuries of trading during which pantiles were brought back from The Netherlands and Belgium as ballast in trading ships.

While the traditional clay pantile is  a single pantile with a single “S” profile with the right-hand edge turned down and the left hand edge turned up a related modern derivative is the double   “S” profile. Single and double pantiles can be either non-interlocking (just overlapping) as per the traditional single clay pantiles or nowadays interlocking as well made of either clay or concrete.

With a traditional single clay pantile the top right hand corner and the bottom left hand corner are cut to a chamfer equal to the headlap and sidelap, with a nib and nail-hole fixing moulded into the top edge normally at the bottom of the trough, before being fired in a kiln. The traditional cut at the top right and bottom left is a straight line, but with some designs is a zigzag or a curve. Provided all the tiles have the same corner shape they will fit together. The cut starts along the top or bottom edge equal to the sidelap distance in from the edge. The cut finished down the side of the tile equal to the headlap distance. The angle of the cut will be dependent upon those two dimensions.