As one of humanity's oldest crafts, thatching has a rich, regional history – particularly in England and Scotland. These recognisable roofs – like those seen on BBC One's The Repair Shop – sustain traditional techniques and skills, and also hold significant archeological value. But the future of this time-old skill remains uncertain.
Tom Allan swapped a career in publishing to learn the craft. We caught up with him to find out how he started to learn the tradition, the history of thatching and what the future of thatching could look like.
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How do you get into thatching?
It was a journey that came about entirely by chance. I read English at university, and left an office job with a book publisher in London with little idea what I wanted to do next, except that it had to be something in the countryside. This didn’t come out of the blue. I had grown up on a smallholding in the Scottish Borders, so was used to physical work and getting my hands dirty – things I had missed during my five years at a publishing desk.
Moving back to the Borders, I tried various things – hedge planting, woodland management – before moving to Devon to train as a National Trust countryside ranger. Towards the end of my traineeship, I was offered the chance of a trial day with a local thatching firm. Twelve years later, I haven’t looked back.
What are pros and cons of being a thatcher?
Why did thatching appeal? I loved the directness of working with my hands. The thrilling feeling of being perched high among the rooftops remains as addictive now as my maiden effort. But it’s not an easy craft to master. You have to make peace with being soaked and frozen in winter, sunburnt in summer and spending your evenings removing reed splinters from your hands. My apprenticeship lasted five years – longer than my university degree and in almost every respect more challenging.
The rewards, though, are many. There are the winter sunrises you’d miss if you stayed in bed, the shafts of afternoon sunlight in our barn, the deep satisfaction of winding back through summer lanes after a long day’s graft. I also love the sense of connection my job gives me to the past. When I’m working on a historic building, I am viscerally aware of being just the latest link in a long chain of craftspeople that stretches far back in time.
What are the different types of thatched buildings?
One of the most special buildings I’ve worked on is a 15th-century Devon longhouse on Dartmoor. Devon longhouses are now found only on Dartmoor and its neighbouring districts, and are characterised by the presence of a shipon – a space in which the livestock were kept in wintertime. The human inhabitants lived in the other half of the building, which was always uphill of the animals and their excretions. For this reason, longhouses are built on a slope, which, in Devon, is never difficult to find.
I love Devon longhouses because, like all vernacular buildings, they’re rooted in and shaped by their surroundings. Thatched roofs in Norfolk, for example, look very different, with steep, high roofs and angular gables that reflect the flat horizons of the fens. The fine timber-framed houses of the Cotswolds are crowned with thick wheat ridges cut into elaborate scallops and patterns. In the Western Isles of Scotland, the simple blackhouses are thatched with wild plants such as marram grass or heather and are simple, low buildings that cling like limpets to the landscape.
How long does it take to thatch a roof?
However a roof is thatched, it’s a thoroughly manual, time-consuming process. Completely re-thatching a house usually takes several weeks. The biggest roof I’ve worked on took close to six months. Thatching is a much slower process than tiling or slating, and the work is highly skilled and specialist. Materials are bulky and produced for our craft alone.
How expensive is it to thatch a roof?
For these reasons, it should be little surprise that covering a roof with thatch is today a more expensive option than doing so with slate or tile. What was once considered a roof of the rural poor – memorably dismissed by The Architects’ and Builders’ Journal in the early 1910s as “materially an abomination and morally a snare” – is now a roof of luxury. And sustainability. Instead of firing concrete into tiles or quarrying slate, you can keep the rain out of your home by using plants, which will lock up the carbon they contain for the lifetime of the roof.
What material is used for thatching?
The main plant used for thatching in the UK today is water reed (Phragmites australis). It’s a marshland weed that grows everywhere from Japan to Peru, and its tall, tough stems make for one of the world’s most durable and versatile types of thatch. Water reed has probably been used to create shelter for as long as humans have lived in the British Isles, but it’s not always been the main thatching material here.
The history of thatching
Before the Second World War, wheat dominated. It was a byproduct of farming and was used on roofs just about everywhere, except areas close to major water reedbeds such as the Norfolk Broads, Somerset Levels and brackish leys along the south Devon coast.
The arrival of the combine harvester nearly spelled the end for thatching wheat. The new varieties developed for the combines were too short to be usable on the roof, and the combining process bruised the straw and made it unusable as thatch. But instead of disappearing, thatching wheat entered a new phase as a specialist, but still economically viable, product.
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The Devon farmer who supplies me with wheat, John Cole, is illustrative of this. When John took over his father’s farm in the 1950s he proudly told his father he was going to stop growing wheat for the local thatchers and “combine the whole bloody lot”. Which he promptly did. But the next autumn his phone kept ringing as thatchers called him up to ask for more straw, and he quickly realised there was still money to be made in growing the stuff. John and his son Robert still devote a significant acreage to growing thatching wheat every year.
As for water reed, it’s still cut in the Norfolk Broads and in Suffolk. A small amount is also harvested in Tayside, in north-east Scotland. But the vast majority of the reed used in the UK today – at least 90% – is imported from overseas. Eastern Europe, Turkey and China are some of the main suppliers, with much of the reed being imported into the UK via handlers in The Netherlands, who supply thatchers in the rest of Europe, too. This is the strange new reality of thatching: on any given day, I might be using water reed from the same Turkish marsh as a craftsman in Denmark or Holland.
This speaks to another surprising truth about the trade: while thatch is deeply rooted in place, it’s also universal. As I found in the course of researching my book On the Roof: A Thatcher’s Journey, many of the techniques I learned in the West Country are also used by roofers in the Danube Delta. A thatcher from Japan rejuvenates an ageing roof with short lengths of reed in an identical manner to one in Rotterdam. All of us are keepers of one of humanity’s oldest crafts. Thatching may be deeply connected to our idea of the British countryside, but it also connects us to an even older, shared past.
What is the future of thatching?
Thatchers are often told by passersby that ours is a “dying art”. This is true in some parts of the country. In Scotland, for example, there are only 306 thatched roofs left, with three thatchers remaining to maintain them. But people have been pronouncing the death of thatching for at least 200 years and, somehow, we’re still here. And in much of England, thatch is thriving. The highest concentration of thatched roofs is in the West Country, particularly Devon and Dorset, and across the south of England to Kent and East Anglia. A new generation is taking an interest in the craft thanks to the Instagram and TikTok videos of Shane Stevens – @thethatchingguy – and Joe Suggs, aka Thatcher Joe.
The techniques we use are evolving, too. Thatch is often fixed to the roof timbers with ‘screw wires’ (wooden screws with long wire attachments) instead of tying it on with wire, or with tarred cord or natural rope, as was the traditional way. Most English thatchers use petrol or cordless hedge trimmers for at least some jobs. This can prove controversial among traditionalists, who believe edge tools such as shearing hooks produce a finer finish. They do but, used in the right way, machines help to make the thatching process a little quicker and a little more efficient – and more economical.
When I visited Japan to research my book, I saw that many new apprentices are (like me) now university graduates. A significant proportion of these are women. In Denmark, I met a refugee from Syria who has mastered the obscure craft of seagrass thatching. There is room for people from every background in thatching. A good eye and steady hand help, but the most important requirement is the patience and tenacity to persist and master the craft. The first step is to do what I did in that draughty Devon barn: pick up an armful of thatch and give it a go.
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Main image: Tom uses a paddle-shaped tool called a legget to ‘finish’ a course of thatch. Credit: Justin Foulkes
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