Bletchingdon School

 

64,000 red/blue blend commercial tiles. arris hips, valley tiles, half round ridges

Edgar Taylor – Chartered Building Company

Coleman Hicks Partnership – Architects

Built on land owned by the Duchy of Cornwall, the plans for this £3.5 million School and Community Centre needed approval from the Duchy as well as the Parish and District councils. 

 

 

 

Challenge

The architect, Sam Cook at Coleman Hicks explains “Bletchingdon School is a project designed to look timeless so we were looking for a product which had a natural colour generated by the firing. We know Dreadnought can achieve this and we use their products in North Oxford and in Conservation Areas because of the lovely range of colours and mix they can provide to match an existing context.

 

 

 

 

Solution

After searching the market, we decided on  Dreadnought’s Red Blue blend plain tiles because the natural process means that some tiles are red, others blue, and many have a bit of each – the other red blue tiles we considered were more uniform and had a very similar grading of red to blue in each tile, which can look artificial on a large area.

 

 

 

 

 

Result

The commercial tiles met our budget restrictions and since installing the roof we are really pleased by the way the imperfections in the tile shape mean they sit slightly differently on the roof giving amazing variation in reflection as the sun hits the product.”