The roof of the horreo was very curved – yet probably quite sound, but it’s obviously not improving as time goes on and some of the tiles are pretty big and would cause damage if they fell on anyone!
Ian has been talking for a while of removing the tiles and the strong wind we had recently reminded us that it was the best thing to do. It had quite a dip in the middle-
So Ian carried some of the tiles off and knocked the rest down
When he finished we had quite a pile of tiles.
But look at the size of some of them. My foot is for scale.
These tiles were massive and would have gone some way to holding the others in place because of the weight of them.
The massive investment in material and manpower that must have gone into making and maintaining the horroes reminded us that the horreos weren’t simply garden ornaments or fancy sheds, they would have been hugely important buildings which were necessary to life in years gone by.
So now the horreo is roofless! Next step will be to remove the wood and see how much of it is solid – but that’s not urgent – or at least it’s not at the moment, it depends if the slates were holding this all in place and whether the wood starts collapsing.
it’s a shame that our horreo has a wooden base and not a stone one like just about every other one around! If it had stone it would be easy to repair, but if the wood beams are rotten then it will be a bigger job.
Ian disturbed two bats who were sleeping in there, we know we have bats in the barn so hopefully they’ll just make their way in there.
This went quite well so maybe now we’ll try to take down the roof on the barn that’s collapsing.
It’s not completely apparent from this pic, however there’s a big hole which is sort of in the centre of the roof where it has collapsed. It’s not as dangerous as the horreo roof as if tiles fell from that they may fall on us or one of the animals – here the roof is falling inwards in an area of the building which we have blocked off however it would make sense to get it taken down. The challenge is the floor beneath it has collapsed, so it’s going to be a more complicated job.
This is looking into the barn and of course we shouldn’t be seeing daylight like this through the roof!
And this is a nice photo of the sun over the beach in the morning. There’s normally a couple of small fishing boats moored here so I wonder if they had gone out for early fishing!
