In Grafton Ma, the historic Willard House and Clock Museum will be getting a new synthetic cedar shake roof. O’LYN Roofing, a New England roofing specialist has been hired to fix the leaking roof.
The museum holds over 80 priceless clocks from the colonial era collection. The clocks were created by Simon Willard along with his father and four brothers. The Willard’s began making clocks in the small Massachusetts workshop in 1766. The museum is the birthplace and original workshop of the Willard clockmakers.
Winter Storm Damaged the Roof
A storm in 2011 was too much for the several hundred year old structure and water began pouring down the walls narrowly missing the priceless clocks.
When talking about the synthetic cedar shake roof, O’LYN’s production manager Todd Mellor said “It was chosen because it will not only keep the same look and maintain the buildings historic integrity but it will also provide more of a fire retardant surface than the material it is replacing. We had to bring in a structural engineer to determine how best to reinforce the building to make sure it could handle that additional weight of the synthetic roof and we’re confident this is the way to go.”
Work has already begun to reinforce the structure; they expect the roof repairs to take approximately one week.
