The History of Roofing

The earliest roofs were not roofs at all, but natural shelters such as caves and bluffs. Roofs are such necessary and obvious requirements for a safe and comfortable life that they can't be said to have been invented, but rather were discovered when people took shelter from rain, cold, and heat.

It wasn't long before it occurred to people to create shelters for themselves in places where natural shelters were lacking. Roofs probably came before houses, actually, with lean-to shelters before there were walls or floors.

The earliest houses had roofs as part of the whole rather than as separate structure. Tents, wigwams, and similar structures would be set up quickly and taken down again as the early people moved on, following the animals they hunted.

With agriculture, things got a little more serious. By 7500 BC, there were bricks in the Middle East.  If you're building a brick house, you want something a little more permanent in the way of a roof than a couple of branches or an animal skin laid over the top of the walls.

Still, many if not most people in the world were still making roofs of mud or weaving them from branches or straw.

It wasn't until the 12th century that King John of England made a ruling requiring clay tiles for all English homes. Until that time, roofs had been thatched, a nice fairy tale look but a terrible fire hazard and just the thing to encourage mice and rats. Clay tiles had been used for roofing in Corinth, in the Mediterranean, as early as the 7th century BC.

By the 1600s, Europeans, and European colonists in the New World, were using tin and wooden shingles as well as thatch and tiles. Asphalt shingles came along at the end of the 1800s.

The 1900s (the 20th century) was an intensive burst of improvement in shingles, driven by research and the appearance of new technologies. Roofers of a century ago would be amazed by the shingles we have today.

At Bill West Roofing, we've been in business since the 20th century. We offer the perfect blend of traditional craftsmanship and modern technology. You'll never miss thatch roofs when you have one of our roofs on your home. We promise.