From being the most common roofing material almost everywhere, thatch has gradually been replaced by tile or slate. Thatching materials include heather, gorse, broom, flax, reed, rye and wheat straw. These light materials were particularly appropriate in places where buildings were made of cob, chalk cob (wychert) or clunch, less able to carry the weight of stone, tile or slate. It is not surprising that Devon, which has the most cob buildings, also has the most thatch. Eaves with no gutterings far overhang the wall to drop water well away.

The materials were local and cheap. They were also efficient: ‘The insulation of an average tile roof with 100mm (4in) insulating quilt is fifty per cent less than a roof with 300mm (12in) Long Straw thatch’, according to Hertfordshire county council. Of the three main forms of thatching, long straw was the most widespread – in the South, Midlands and inland East Anglia – and most frequently used (see image below right). As a by-product of grain production it was readily available. It produces the shaggiest and thickest of the thatched roofs and can be identified by the hazel rodding that forms a hem around the gables and eaves. Long straw is shaken, gathered up any way up and collected into compact bundles known as yealms, which are fastened onto the existing base layer of straw. Strips are gradually added from the eave to the ridge and held down with U-shaped willow or hazel spars. The eaves are cut and held into position with hazel liggers in varying patterns, and the whole roof is covered with wire netting to keep the birds out.

In the wetter dairying country of Devon, west Dorset, the Blackmore Vale in Somerset / Dorset and parts of Cornwall, combed-straw (also known as combed wheat-reed) thatching evolved (see image above left). Here the ears and leaves are removed by a reed comber. The straw is made into bundles (nitches) with the stems all facing the same way. The new straw is loosened from its bundles and laid over the old coat in horizontal courses with the sharp stalk ends facing downwards, neatly knocked into position with a leggatt and held down with crooks; the eaves are cut by hand. Combed-straw thatching produces neat, homely, ample cottage roofs. In Devon characteristic cone shapes protect the porches. The pitches are generally steep, to shed rain, but in Devon the roof pitches are said to be ‘slack’ or shallow, lower than those in East Anglia.

Water reed’s heartland is in East Anglia, the Norfolk Broads in particular, and it produces thinner, more angular roofs (see image above). Reed is not pliable enough for ridging, so saw-sedge is used – about three thousand bundles are produced annually at Wicken Fen, Cambridgeshire. The lower edges of the sedge are often decorated with ornamental patterns, such as scallops, with rods and hazelspars. Reed has been grown in small quantities in other coastal areas, such as Abbotsbury (Abbotsbury Spear) and Radipole in Dorset and Slapton Ley and Dartmouth in Devon, serving local needs.

Thatchers display individual traits and styles. Jo Cox and John R.L. Thorp, for their book ‘Devon Thatch’, interviewed John Rodgers from Modbury, who “came from a family that produced sixteen thatchers in five generations”. (1) This is often expressed in the treatment of ridges, dormers, eaves and gables.

As early as 1212 (in London) cities and towns started enacting bylaws prohibiting the construction of new buildings with thatch because of the fire risk. In the 1950s and 1960s the introduction of shorter-stemmed wheat varieties began to replace the traditional thatching varieties such as Red Standard, a Devonshire favourite, Maris Widgeon and Maris Huntsman. These new varieties were useless for thatching, and the combine harvester was geared to short stemmed wheat, so for the first time thatching wheat had to be grown specially.

The distribution of thatching styles became severed from locally grown materials. The Rural Industries Bureau, founded to revivify rural industries after the war, set about boosting the craft of thatching. Problems had arisen with the longevity of long-straw thatch, perhaps as a consequence of the over-use of fertilisers, which made the stems brittle. As a result, the Bureau promoted combed straw and tried to extend its use further east into traditional long-straw country. The Devon farmers who still grew thatching wheat found it more profitable to sell it to the richer counties beyond the South West; this resulted in a shortage of combed straw in Devon, where they began to use reed instead.

In 1960 the Bureau published ‘The Thatcher’s Craft’, which contained a longevity table of the three types of thatch: water reed – fifty to sixty years; combed straw – twenty-five to forty years; long straw – ten to twenty years (2). Water reed was pronounced as the thatch that, despite its higher initial costs, represented the best value. This might be true in the drier, eastern part of the country, but in the South West, with roofs of lower pitches and more rain, reed may have a much shorter life span. Culture, long knowledge and appropriateness were over-ridden. Water reed still replaces the locally distinctive combed-straw thatch of the South West; perhaps three-quarters of thatching in Devon was water reed in 2000.

According to Richard and Darren Tuck, two west Dorset thatchers:

“The debate on water reed: the thing that spoilt it was that water reed thatchers came in and put the water reed on the way that water reed on the way that water reed should look in Norfolk. Dead straight, dead flat, very sharp corners, whereas if they had thatched it in the wheat-reed style nobody would have minded so much. We always thatch wheat-reed style whether we are using wheat-reed or water-reed, because we feel that’s how cottages should look around here. But even if we are doing a new build we will have soft curves. I have used water reed cut from the Fleet. I have used some in Abbotsbury in my early days. Abbotsbury spear. That’s real good old hard long lasting stuff.” (3)

There were other problems. Reed roofs are stripped down to the rafters for re-thatching, but with combed straw and long straw only the damaged material is removed and a new layer of straw placed over it. Reed thatchers working on combed-straw roofs began uncovering smoke-blackened thatch and wattle work, caused by fires in the open halls of buildings built before 1550. Its importance cannot be overstated: “Here we have an extraordinary stock of actual crops – albeit rather dried out and dusty – that wqere growing in the fields from the medieval period”, John Lowe wrote. ‘This is the largest resource of the study of historic plant remains – archaeo-botany – left in Europe…The thatched roofs of Devon farmhouses are libraries of unwritten information about the farming past…complete with all the wild flowers which grew there 500 years ago.” (4)

Ways of ‘over-coating’ combed straw with reed have now been perfected, and it is often hard to tell the difference between water reed and combed straw. But, as Cox and Thorp point out, “What undoubtedly has been lost in the replacement of straw with imported water reed is not only the long Devon tradition of combed straw, but also the old mutality between Devon farming and Devon thatching, and the vernacular good sense of using a locally available material on local buildings.”

They argue that changes since the Second World War obscured the picture of what was really ‘traditional’ in many places, that in the 1950s the concept of local distinctiveness was not valued as it is today.. The first sign oif revolt came from conservation officers in Northamptonshire, who were worried that their long straw tradition was being lost to combed straw and water reed advocated by the Bureau, and gave listed building consent only for re-thatching with long straw. Other local authorities followed suit (except Devon) and many disputes ensued. In 2000 English Heritage produced guidance notes that reinforced the need to conserve local and regional thatching styles and techniques. Some thatchers felt the choice should be left to them and to the householders. It is ironic that a kind of roofing whose success was assured because it came from local materials is now largely dependent on water reed flown in from Turkey, Hungary and the Danube delta – about one and a half million bundles annually.

Two Dorset thatchers:” Saddles, eyebrow windows, Devon is a bit more rounded than Dorset. I don’t think they tend to strip so much off. That’s why they tend to look like that, they tend to build up a bit. South Somerset is very, very similar, then as you go towards Wiltshire they put the fancy spars around the eave and that as well. A bit more decorative. The Dorset one is more practical, more straightforward…”

What can I do?

Find out from your building conservation officers (district and county) what their policies are on thatching and local distinctiveness. Ask them what thatching styles and materials are used in your locality. Look at the thatched buildings around you. Try to persuade them to take a stronger stance if it is weak.

Building conservation officers can only influence the kind of thatching on listed buildings or if they are in a conservation area.

Outside these areas there is no control, and a householder / thatcher can do almost anything he / she likes – even if it destroys the local vernacular (often the reason why people like the place). You will have to resort to peer pressure – local societies such as the Civic Society / CPRE group for help.

If your house has a thatched roof, have it re-thatched with the same material (sourced as locally as possible) in the same idiom. Don’t let pushy thatchers persuade you to do something you don’t like or want in guise of saving money or the longevity of the thatch. Ask your building conservation officer for a list of reputable thatchers.

Refs:
(1) Jo Cox and R.L. Thorp, Devon Thatch: an illustrated history of thatching and thatched buildings in Devon, Devon Books, 2001
(2) English Heritage, Thatch and thatching: a guidance note, 2000.
(3) John Lowe, Dorset’s Thatch Heritage, Dorset Archaeological and Natural History Society newsletter 1996/7.
(4) James Crowden & George Wright (photographs), Dorset Man, AGRE Books, 2006