THATCHING A RURAL ART article by Josephine Dunn

THATCHING A RURAL ART

If you mention thatching in conversation one immediately gets a variety of responses: Isn’t it a dying art?, so picturesque, expensive, difficult to insure, a fire risk, "Oh, I’d love a thatched cottage in the country!" Try asking a thatcher, and you may hear: " it’s like messing about in a compost heap on top of someone’s house, not much fun in the winter when the straw is frozen stiff and you spend two hours fighting the wind just to get the tarpaulins off."

So, is it a romantic ideal or are thatchers merely glorified roofers? Much of the thatching industry is centred around conservation and bound by the need to meet regulations governing listed buildings. In order to preserve vernacular diversity the thatcher must be master of many ancient techniques. Two natural materials are used, water reed and straw. Henry Best’s seventeenth century diary * (Rural Economy in Yorkshire in 1641)) records "wheat and rye straw as the best for thatching although barley strawe is good alsoe if it be without weedes and not over shorte and haver straw is accounted worst, because birds meddle most with this kind." Straw can be laid either as 'Long straw’ , where the lengths of the straw are pulled down and show, or as 'Combed wheat reed’ which is dressed up with a legate in the same way as water reed , giving them a finish with the ends of the reed making a face to repel water.

Traditionally water reed belongs to East Anglia, long straw to the south-east of the UK and combed wheat to the south-west, but examples of all three can be seen in Rutland. Water reed is the longest lasting but, according to local thatcher, Geoff Robinson, straw has both aesthetic and practical qualities. It can be more attractive on an intricate roof curved by years, is more flexible, allowing decorative features on ridges and porches, it is possible to increase the pitch of a roof by layering or change the geometry for artistic or practical reasons such as channelling water away from windows. In addition it can be grown locally on farms. Water reed is a more expensive material but since both long straw and combed wheat require more mucking about with to make them look pretty, thereby increasing labour costs, the cost of roofing with reed and straw is about the same. Water reed is bought by the bundle which cost around £2 each. Straw is bought by the ton, costing from around £400 for long straw to £600 - £700 for combed wheat. Thatchers charge for covering a Square’ ten feet by ten feet -but then have to add the cost of ridging, decorative eaves and porches which can be fiddly jobs taking many man-hours.

For a new house water reed, which could last around fifty years before needing repair, is often recommended, although conservation officers may disapprove if straw is a more common regional material. Arguments for reed durability are based on research done in the 1950’s which took no account of regional variations in climate or whether a house faced North, South, East or West. Both weather and location can affect the longevity of thatch, so long straw is OK on Suffolk but not suitable in Devon.

It is interesting to note that the thatched house in the Ideal Home Exhibition this year was in long straw. Later, one is faced with the option of striping the whole roof and re-covering or partially stripping and adding a new layer over the old thatch. Best writes, "when the thatch groweth thinne all over the best way is to give it a newe coat all through, or (as wee say) a whole thatch, but when it decayeth but in some places, the best way is onely to amende the holes and gutters for too much thacke is a means to make the spares yeelde and oftentimes to break." In this way three or four layers build up over 100 years and represent an important historical record.

Current Listed Building regulations demand that like is replaced with like, but how does an owner, or thatcher, decide when more than one material has been used over the years? There is a good example of this in South Street in Oakham, where one side of the roof is water reed in good repair and the other is long straw and waiting to be replaced. Some would say that it is better to have a whole roof in one material, others argue that it is important to maintain local diversity. Mike Smith, Principal Planning Officer Rutland County Council, considers it important to ask why there were two materials used in the first place and says that they always work closely with the Conservation Officer, Elizabeth Bryan, who is the authority on the subject. Elizabeth says, while it is important to have diversity across the UK we must try to keep regional character. The predominant style in Rutland is long straw and wrapped ridges, which have a softer run-off for rain. Verges tend to be cut here while in Northamptonshire they are mostly wrapped. After the First World War patterned ridges became more common as thatchers came in from other regions. Long straw is more comfortable for people to look at, softer on the eye , and it has better insulation properties reed needs loft insulation, long straw does not. We try to encourage restoration of wrapped ridges by giving grants but if a house has a cut ridge owners can replace 'Like with like’. As many parts of Rutland are conservation areas this affects houses which are not listed.

Oakham based thatcher, Paul Dear, says although he offers clients advice on what is the best economic and aesthetic choice he usually has to leave the decision to the Conservation Officer when a building is Listed. He says it can be difficult to say which came first, did the reed replace long straw or the other way around? Unless there is a photographic or written record it may be impossible to tell which is original. Paul trained and works within Rutland, rarely travelling more than twenty miles from Oakham, so his style could be described as typical of the county.

Using materials grown in the region is ecologically sound and good for the local economy, but where materials may previously have been available locally, now they often have to be transported many miles, from Norfolk or Scotland, or even imported from Europe and Turkey. In Rutland, water reed was once grown in beds at the bottom of Hambleton Hill, now the nearest source of thatching material is straw grown by John Barber at Sileby in Leicestershire. Occasionally a farmer is still able to ’grow his own’. Paul Dear has recently thatched a house in Empingham where the owner has provided the straw grown on land he owns at Ingthorpe on the very edge of Rutland.

The main problem for thatchers today is the shortage of straw cut by old-fashioned methods. Mechanisation has meant that straw is combined threshed and cut in the field so that the straw is short, crushed, and bound into huge bales. Thatching requires straw cut or mown and bound into sheaves with the grain left on. These can be used with very little sorting. Long straw is put through a threshing drum, some grain remains and it is of varying lengths. Combed wheat is made by using a combing machine which beats the ears and cleans the rubbish out, leaving even lengths of straw more like water reed. The straw is shaken out and wetted, then drawn out of the heap into ‘Yealms,’ piles around three feet wide and two-three inches thick, which are bound together. Traditionally this was done with twisted lengths of dry straw but nowadays yealms are bound with baler twine. Three or four yealms are tied together to make a ‘ bottle’. Best’s diary records, show that "serveth will usually carry up fower bottles att a time, and sometimes three if the thatch bee longe and very wette." Having carried both water reed and straw, I can attest to how heavy they are when wet. My only comment is that seventeenth century wenches must have had strong arms, if not before they attended the thatcher, then certainly after!

Thatching needs longer lengths of straw which the older varieties of wheat and rye produced, although in a bad year thatchers had to, and still must, use whatever is available. There is only a short window for drilling for thatching straw, the last few days of October are good, by November it is too cold and wet. Last year produced a poor harvest due to the wet weather foot and mouth disease added logistical problems. John Barber reports his 2001 crop as, only 40% of average and of shorter length than I would like. On twenty-one acres, he mostly grows Wigeon, a wheat variety produced in 1968 which is widely used all over the UK. Trials with the wheat/rye hybrid Triticale were unsatisfactory as it produced , straw five feet high which was so heavy when cut green it caused hernias and shrank on drying meaning we had to re-tie stooks. Poor harvests make it difficult to get farmers to consider growing what is a high-risk, but high-return, crop.

Finding labour is difficult as, retired agricultural labourers would rather sit in a nice warn combine than turn straw with a pitch fork. The only modern machinery which produces acceptable results is American and relatively expensive to purchase. As the older cutting and binding machines wear out and get fewer and far between, it becomes more economic to import straw from Poland where old-fashioned machinery still exists. John Barber has set a good example in building up and maintaining a stock of traditional farm machinery, and built a comber from old plans. In the 1970’s 1980’s the Rural Development Commission (formerly COSIRA) realised there was almost no machinery left to process thatching materials. They got access to the best three Murch combers made in Umberleigh, Devon and drew up a set of plans which were made available to farmers. John spent around eighteen months of farmers spare time building his comber and supplies much of the thatching material used in Rutland.

Perhaps it is now time for government to consider encouraging farm diversification to grow more old varieties of straw and maintain, or even manufacture, suitable machinery to supply the thatching industry.

There is also the debate over long straw v. combed wheat. One faction claims that long straw represents a traditional style of thatching and that the combing machine produces an arguably modern, or previously not widely used, style of material. Long straw, they assert, is the closest in style to seventeenth century methods, that is, before general mechanisation of farming when straw was still cut by sythes. Not so, says Geoff Robinson, who has studied past farming and thatching methods. It is possible to bring sheaves of wheat into a barn, thresh them using a flail and, having tidied them by hand, produce combed wheat as economically as producing long straw. Not only does this make better quality thatching material, it provides grain giving two sources of income. Farmers then, as now, would have made choices based on simple economics. If a method makes financial sense makes a profit then this is the course to follow.

In fact it was the Great War and then WWII which affected thatching the most. First skilled men and then raw materials were sent to the front. Men died and their crafts were not passed on, thatch wore out and was replaced by cheap corrugated iron. By the time conservation had been ‘ discovered’ post WWII, much had been lost and forgotten. Where once the art of thatching was passed from generation to generation of families now it is hard to find an apprentice willing to stay long enough to learn. Paul Dear, who learnt from his uncle Aubrey Minkley, and Geoff Robinson, who decided to thatch after studying physics at UMIST, would like to find apprentices to keep their craft growing for the future. Both say it takes three to four years to become a thatcher, but the travelling, long hours bad weather and sore hands can put off a lot of prospective apprentices.

Thatching is not highly paid either, all the thatchers I spoke to only expect to average £20,000 per annum. So, if thatching is not the romantic ideal some may imagine, why do it? Geoff says, the satisfaction of seeing a job well done is reward in itself. "I wanted to do something which makes a difference to the quality of life . Thatching is an honest trade working with sustainable materials, it doesn’t destroy the ecology it uses it." It’s something we should all think about. Wise words consider them well.

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