ROOFING CONTRACTORS working on a £6m heritage conservation programme in Southampton have unearthed some fascinating roofing artefacts.

Last week, Imperial Contracting Ltd, the roofing contractor working on the roof of Westgate Hall, made an extraordinary discovery.

While lifting the lead on the roof, they stumbled across a meticulously stamped lead plaque, carefully placed for future roofers to discover.

The lead plaque, bears the name of Fred Pitcher and reads:

This lead flat laid 1937 by F D Pitcher plumber

‘Lead flat’ is a term formulated in the nineteenth century according to Oxford English Dictionary (OED) It is a compound word abbreviated from ‘lead’ and ‘flat roof’ used by those in the trade.

The OED entry on lead flat reads:

The earliest known use of the noun lead-flat is in the 1870s.

OED’s earliest evidence for lead-flat is from 1875, in the writing of Edward H. Knight, patent lawyer and expert in mechanics.

Eighty years ago it was common for plumbers, rather than roofers, to undertake lead work on roofs. Many roofs bear ascriptions to the craft of lead workers, with these types of lead marks dubbed ‘graffiti’. Some of these finds have dated back centuries, attesting to the longevity of the work done by the original builders of historic constructions.

The Westgate Hall lead flat was found alongside two pages from the Southern Daily Echo, dated 30 March 1937. The newspaper leads with a story about ‘Mercury boy’s funeral – full naval honours at Hamble.’

The page includes multiple advertisements, such as for Southampton’s ice rink, and a theatrical performance of Dorothy L. Sayer’s novel – Busman’s Honeymoon – at Southampton’s Grand Theatre.

In 1937, many young English intellectuals had travelled to Spain to fight in the civil war, the Nazis were on the rise in Germany, Roosevelt started his second term as US President, and George VI and Elizabeth (the late Queen’s mother) were crowned. JRR Tolkein published The Hobbit, Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs cartoon film debuted and Morgan Freeman and Vanessa Redgrave were also born that year.

Heritage Programme

The roof work on Westgate Hall is being undertaken as part of the £6m Heritage Asset Repair Programme (HARP) for Southampton City Council.

The finds have sparked the curiosity of the Council’s restoration team and their initial research suggests that Fred Pitcher may have descendants still local to Southampton, they say.

The artefacts have now been entrusted to the Council’s Archaeology Unit for safekeeping.

Councillor Satvir Kaur, Leader of Southampton City Council is quoted as commenting: “This remarkable discovery offers invaluable insights to the restoration of Westgate in the 1930’s.

“Very little information has survived from that period due to the bombing of our city, so this discovery offers an extraordinary contribution into insight and an understanding of Southampton’s history and story.”

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