THIS IS AN ONGOING ITEM, YOUR INPUT IS WELCOME

Old forms of thatching and indeed buildings required only two parameters, the economic and technological advances to set the methods.

For various reasons if you could or would not afford it, or if the material did not exist it was not used, obvious but true. The first form of building and roofing would be leafy branches bent over to keep the rain or sun off you, what we have today are just adaptations.

If you could afford the time related today in monetary form, or find the materials that nature and technology of the time produced only then could you have it. This progression carried on to cutting down the branches and making a tent out of them and by trial and error making them stand up and keeping the elements out by covering with a more waterproof layers. 

Simple, but some archaeologists and historians do not sometimes seem to accept simple.

Thatch always was the poor mans roof, if you could find and afford better roofing you used it, with thatch this has rapidly changed even in my lifetime In particular in the UK and rapidly now world wide. This can be seen today among the distribution of thatch world wide. It is however more distorted when a thatched roof is a desirable almost aesthetic artifact with our modern lifestyle modifying both the technological and financial aspects.

To concentrate on the less disturbed and even until recently less affluent area’s like Scotland and Ireland may convince you of the logical progression. Cost in time, money or resources was critical, keep the walls low to save on material and heat, keep the roof pitch down to save on timber, make as weatherproof as possible by in some cases covering with turf, make this turf or even earlier layers of thatching material more waterproof by placing vegetation into or over it to make the water flow off quicker.

With our modern lives we seem to forget that transport was as far as it could be carried on your back and fastening materials together relied on making them, even a doweled timber joint hand cut is time consuming, try making string or rope with local natural materials by hand. Folk had to work hard just to eat, they had to balance the time saved in the long run making a more robust dwelling against time producing food.

Looked at it in that light world wide without the distortions appearing not much earlier than the 1900’s of our perception of cute thatched property by the mainly wealthy, materials used had to be by and large local, cheap & plentiful and the variations in property styles largely governed by them, until about the same time even exchanges of ideas among rural workmen would be slow. We are not after all talking about castles and grand houses where ideas did circulate very early and quite quickly, there would be a trickle down effect and it can be for example be seen today in the Fen Lands of the UK with the Dutch drainage engineers of the 1700's  building and thatching expertise showing in the architecture.

The earliest form of thatching in the UK for example was probably even before the Iron Age hut, even this date is possibly much earlier. The shape is dictated by its inherent stability and the lack of edged tools needed for the timber frame. Although only archaeological evidence in the main survives in the UK as post holes there are still many African countries still using similar structures. It is not unreasonable to assume that the methods of thatching either direct to the woodwork or to a substrate has been used on earlier buildings with modifications to the present day. The actual surface thatching material has not obviously changed substantially, all that has is the fastening and building technique, Withy, bramble, bark, and bramble were all used as fasteners and only superseded by relatively modern twine and rope and now the screw with stainless steel wire as the modern progression. Wooden pegs of various forms now survive as thatching spars while the grass rope and other hand made ‘rope’ used to tie the thatch to the rafters being now man made synthetics.

The use of the materials used on the surface coat cannot have changed as they are natural vegetation, work must always start at the lower levels and proceed upwards overlapping to allow water to drip from stem to stem, the material must be held firmly enough not to blow away and the surface open enough to allow air to circulate the wetted ends and allow drying.

The choice of the material used as the weathering coat is critical and the knowledge of which materials perform best could be seen as the start of a skill in the construction of a thatched roof.

Although cereal crops and water reed (Phragmites australis) now predominate, they would also have been used in the past, with cereal straws having the extra advantage of being almost a waste product of the threshing process. The various methods used in reaping and threshing would dictate the way the material was used for thatching, plucking or cutting the seed heads and using adaptations like the Gallic reaper (vallus) described by Pliny, and also found inscribed on a Belgium Roman carving from Buzenol only pre date the modern reaper. I have seen wheat straw used as thatch after the head has been removed, the stalk then pulled up and thatched intact with the roots up.

Later methods of threshing such as flails on cut sheaves would leave the sheave tied for ease of handling but cleared of grain and used on the roof much the same way as combed wheat reed today. I have also seen this buried under old layers of thatch, the scythe cut end of the straw is distinctive and the leaf is more abundant than with the mechanised version.  Within living memory wild oats were pulled from growing crops to prevent seed propagation, the pliable weed grasses then being made into rope, some of this used to fasten the thatch onto the rafters; these are still evident in many old roofs, sometimes preserved in the plaster as are other ‘rope’ techniques mentioned earlier.

Don’t think that reed or straw is the only material that can be used. Heather flax and broom is rarely used now for example, but plenty of evidence exists for its past widespread use. Fred Cooper  who helped train me and assisted in the writing of ‘The Thatchers Craft’ was fond of reminding apprentices such as me of the use of cricket bat shavings at St Neots and brash (the fine twigs from coppicing) also being used. It is a shame that these old skills are being lost and even the existing surviving tools have lost the meaning of their original purpose. After all we are only 180 or so generations removed from the bronze age!

Keep your mind open and think what was available locally at the time, remember that thatch in its early form would probably be applied by the people under it, the best of these evolving into the modern undoubtedly highly skilled thatcher of today.

An example of heather thatching using a fire retardant sub roof

Perhaps someone would sponsor me one of these days to get more information down before it is lost!

I would be most interested if you have any information, or better still photos or old bills relating to old or unusual methods of thatching. Any information will not be published without your prior permission, and never given to councils or other 'regulating' authorities that could cause problems for you in the future.