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When we say our Spanish Dover is a great match to Buckingham slate, it is for good reason. To fully understand why and to understand the importance of such a product, one must first turn back an look at a small part of the history of slate use in the United States. Buckingham slate is manufactured in Arvonia, VA. And while Buckingham slate as a trade name has not been around for 2 centuries, that is about how long slate has been produced in Arvonia. A complete history of the production from this area and Buckingham slate can be found in The Slate Bible available at www.jenkinsslate.com or at www.amazon.com When you have a reference to Buckingham slate, the material may, or may not, have been produced by Buckingham slate, but is more likely Arvonia slate produced by one of several companies that operated in that area over the past two centuries. The bottom line is that the close proximity of Arvonia to the early developments in the United States made it a very popular roofing material. In fact, most government buildings in the DC area with slate roofs have the distinctive black “shiny” slate referred to as Buckingham slate. It is also prominent on Universities, Court Houses, Churches, Military Bases, Libraries and many of the old historic municipal building in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. So you could say that Buckingham, or rather Arvonia slate, was the roofing slate of the south for over two centuries.
So why is Buckingham slate unique? Today there are very few truly unfading gray or black slate deposits in the United States. While there were unfading blacks similar to Buckingham available in Maine, Pennsylvania and Georgia, Buckingham is the only one still in production. In fact, the world wide supply is somewhat limited when it comes to unfading black slate. Deposits in Spain, China, Germany and Wales are yielding some production as roofing slate. However it is typically only the Spanish and Chinese unfading black slate that makes the voyage to the US. While some of these imported slates are very high quality, others of lesser quality also invade the US market. And while the lower quality imports may be tagged "Unfading Black" or "Unfading Blue Black" they can experience weathering caused by high amounts of iron and carbonate in the stone. This shortage of deposits make any true Unfading Black Slate, Buckingham or not, somewhat unique.
A second factor makes Buckingham slate unique among the unfading black roofing slates. The high level of quartz is exhibited in the color and the sheen, giving the slate “sparkle” in the sunlight. There are only two unfading black slates available in the entire world that have that sheen, Dover and Buckingham slate. Knowing the value of having a similarly unique slate, the owners of Black Diamond Slate visited between 50 and 60 quarries in one specific region of Spain, known to have high quartz and mica, looking for the closest match they could find.” When we saw it, we thought we were looking at Buckingham.” It is such a close match; it was approved by several governing historic boards to be used on US Government owned historic buildings in Washington DC to finish a jobs that had been started with Buckingham. In fact, on one building the Buckingham Slate and the Dover slate were mixed together on the same roof to prove to the review board that they could not tell the difference.
Buckingham slate, or slate from Arvonia, VA, is a great product that has been proven by the test of time. The same can be said for the Dover, which has actually been in production in Spain longer than Buckingham slate. The Dover is tested and classified under US ASTM standards as S-1 grade. The physical properties of the stone are remarkably similar to the Buckingham slate. In fact, a leading geologist in Spain said that there is a possibility that this is the same actual vein of stone. It may sound like a stretch, but he speculated that given the proximity of the quarry in Spain and Buckingham’s Arvonia quarry to their respective coast lines, the theoretic movements in the earth plates millions of years ago, the similarity in the age of the two slate formations and the closeness of the physical properties, the two different deposits may have formed as one and then shifted thousands of miles apart. And while it admittedly sounds like some fantastic story, he honestly feels this is a highly probable theory. So who knows, maybe Dover is really a domestic slate.
So now the question is: If both products are just alike, why would somebody want to use Dover Slate Roofing made in Spain, instead of Buckingham slate made in Arvonia, VA? The answer is simple: Price and availability. Because Buckingham Slate is on thousands of old buildings all over the US, there is an extremely high demand for repairs. At the same time, the supply is limited by the production of only one producer instead of several in the Arvonia area. The result is that lead times can be several months, and the pricing for Buckingham slate can be as much as twice that of the Dover. |
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