TYLES, (Eneycl.) There are various kinds of tyles for the various occasions of building; as plain, thack, ridge, roof, crease, gutter, pan, crooked, or Flemish, corner, hip, dormar, scallop, astragal, traverse, paving, and Dutch tyles.
Plain or thack tyles, are those in ordinary use for covering of houses. They are squeezed flat, while yet soft, in a mould. They are of an oblong figure; and by 17 Edw. IV. c. 4. are to be 10½ inches long, and 6¼ broad, and half an inch and half a quarter thick. But these dimensions are not over strictly kept to.—Ridge, roof, or crease tyles, are those used to cover the ridges of houses, being made circular breadthwise, like an half-cylinder; they are, by the aforesaid statute, to be 13 inches long, and of the same thickness with the plain tyles.—Hip or corner tyles, are those which lie on the hips or corners of roofs. As to form, they are first made flat like plain tyles, but of a quadrangular figure, whose two sides are right lines, and two ends edges of circles, one end being a little concave and the other convex. The convex end is to be about seven times as broad as the concave end, so that they would be triangular but that one corner is taken off; then, before they are burnt, they are bent on a mould breadthwise, like ridge tyles. They have an hole at their narrow end to nail them on by, and are laid.
laid with their narrow end upwards; by statute, they are to be 10½ inches long, and of a convenient breadth and thickness.—Gutter tiles, are those which lie in gutters or valleys in cross buildings. They are made like corner-tyles, only the corners of the broad end are turned back again with two wings. They have no holes in them, but are laid with the broad end upwards, without any nailing. They are made in the same mould as the corner-tyles, and have the same dimensions on the convex side. Their wings are each four inches broad and eight long. Pan, crooked, or Flemish tyles, are used in covering of sheds, lean-tos, and all kinds of flat-roof buildings. They are in form of an oblong parallelogram, as plain tyles; but are bent breadthwise forwards and backwards in form of an S, only one of the arches is at least three times as big as the other; which biggest arch is always laid uppermost, and the less arch of another tyle lies over the edge of the great arch of the former. They have no holes for pins, but hang on the laths by a knot of their own earth. They are usually 14½ inches long, and 10½ broad. By 12 Geo. I. c. 25. they are to be, when burnt, not less than 13½ inches long, and 9½ inches wide, and half an inch thick.—Dormar or dorman tyles consist of a plain tyle and a triangular piece of a plain one standing up at right angles to one side of the plain tyle, and swept with an arch of a circle from the other end, which end terminates in a point. Of these tyles there are two kinds, the triangular piece in some standing on the right, in others on the left side of the plain tyle. And of these again there are two kinds, some having a plain whole tyle, others but half a plain tyle. But in them all the plain tyle has two holes for the pins at that end where the broad end of the triangular piece stands. Their use is to be
laid in the gutters betwixt the roof and the cheeks or sides of the dormars, the plain part lying on the roof, and the triangular part standing perpendicularly by the cheek of the dormar; they are excellent to keep out the wet in those places, and yet they are hardly known any where but in Sussex. The dimensions of the plain tyle part are the same as those of a plain tyle; and the triangular part is of the same length, and its breadth at one end seven inches, and at the other nothing. Scallop or astragal tyles are in all respects like plain tyles, only their lower ends are in form of an astragal, viz. a semicircle with a square on each side. They are used in some places for weather-tyling—Transverse tyles are a kind of irregular plain tyles, having the pin-holes broken out, or one of the lower corners broken off. These are laid with the broken end upwards, upon rafters where pinned tyles cannot hang.
Flemish or Dutch tyles are of two kinds, ancient and modern: the ancient were used for chimney foot-paces; they were painted with antique figures, and frequently with postures of soldiers, some with compartments, and sometimes with more obscure devices; but they come much short of the design and colours of the modern ones. The modern Flemish tyles are commonly used plastered up in the jaumbes of chimneys instead of chimney-corner stones. These are better glazed, and such as are painted (for some are only white) are done with more curious figures and more lively colours than the ancient ones. But both kinds seem to be made of the same whitish clay as our white glazed earthen ware; the modern ones are commonly painted with birds, flowers, &c. The ancient ones are only five inches and a quarter square, and about three quarters of an inch thick; the modern ones six inches and a half square, and three quarters of an inch thick.