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Thatching: A traditional British craft What IS thatching? Well, loosely speaking, thatching is the use of straw or grasses as a building material mainly used for roofs. Using thatch for roofing goes back as far as the Bronze Age in Britain, as demonstrated at Shearplace Hall in Dorset where there are remains of a round hut that shows signs of thatching. Thatched cottages and farm buildings were the norm in rural Britain for a hundred years or more. 
So why the attraction to thatch? First of all, the building practices of bygone Britain ran to lightweight, irregular materials, such as wattle and daub walls, and cruck beams. These walls were simply not made to take much weight, and thatch was by far the lightest weight material available. The study of materials used in thatch buildings can get pretty obscure, but basically, people used whatever was available locally, including; broom, sedge, sallow, flax, grass, and straw. Most common is wheat straw in the south of England, and reeds in East Anglia. Norfolk reed is especially prized by thatchers, although in northern England and Scotland heather was frequently used. Although thatch was primarily used by the poor, occasionally great houses used this most common of materials. In 1300 the great Norman castle at Pevensey (Sussex) bought up 6 acres of rushes to roof the hall and chambers. Much later, in the late 18th century thatched cottages became an extremely popular theme with the "picturesque" painters, who tried to portray an idealized (Romantic/sanitized) version of nature. Churches also used thatch frequently. In one humorous episode the parish church at Reyden, near Southwell, was roofed in 1880 with thatch on the side of the church hidden from the road, and with tiles on the side facing the road. Presumably the tiles looked more elegant than the more commonplace thatch. What caused the decline of thatching? Primarily better transportation. The growing railway network in the Victorian era meant that cheap slate from Wales became easily available all over Britain. Agricultural machinery, particularly the combine harvester, had the unfortunate effect of making wheat straw unusable for thatching. This made Norfolk reed all the more prized, and now the latter material is grown specifically for use in thatching. |