Can someone educate me about this unusual roof?

[dr0591]

I snapped this picture of an interesting house I saw while out for a walk the other evening. The roof looks really unusual to me -- like it has multiple layers or something. If you look closely, you can see that it has maybe three distinct layers in some places (I don't think it's just a beveled shadow board). And some of the corners seem like they're trimmed off at a slant, and angle up a degree or two.

I've never seen anything quite like this before. Is this a specific roof style that I'm unfamiliar with, or just a really unusual custom roof? Is there a practical reason for building a roof this way? How would you go about modeling this in Chief?

Always trying to expand my knowledge about houses! :-)

Here's a link to the full-size photo if you want to download it for closer inspection: http://castleview3d.com/img/house-on...f-course-2.jpg