![]() ![]() ![]() The school consists of a big barn with various roof structures on the ground level to practice on. When he’s not on rooftops in and around Oxfordshire, he’s up in Rushden, Northampton, at Knuston Hall, which is the country’s only school for thatching. Now he’s a full-time employee of Bev and Steve’s business and is in the fourth year of his apprenticeship. He, too, lived near a master thatcher and started learning the trade from him. He is not a relation but shares a last name and a similar experience. ![]() For this job, Fowler will toss and mold 480 bundles of the triticale wheat straw he grew. Long straw, another common material, leaves an untidy finish and doesn’t stay as compact, meaning more visits from the thatcher to redo the roof.īev Fowler has been thatching all his working life. It is most common in the eastern part of the country, especially East Anglia, but the shortage of usable wetlands in England means that much of it is now imported. It’s one-third more expensive but lasts 50 to 70 years. Water reed is very hard, and Fowler compares it to working with bamboo. If there is a cluster of Listed buildings in an area, as in the village where Fowler is working, even new buildings have to keep in character with the older ones. If wheat wasn’t plentiful in their area, they used water reed or long straw. Early thatchers used whatever materials were at hand. In England, 95 percent of all thatched houses are Listed, meaning they have been dubbed historic structures and their character has to be preserved. While Fowler favors triticale, he doesn’t always have a choice in his materials. “In chemical straw you put it down and it looks great for two or three years, but by 10 years it looks different. Modern wheat, altered with pesticides and genetic modification, is too weak to make an effective roofing material. Triticale is an older variety of wheat, harder and organically grown. Thus the cost of the materials alone comes out to nearly £3,500. One bundle costs £7, while the spars cost 15 pence each. The half roof Fowler is working on will take about 480 bundles of straw, weighing approximately three tons, and it is not cheap. The leggett is now steel instead of wood, but the shape is the same. He uses a mallet, shears and a leggett-a rectangular, ridged plate on the end of a handle used to tap the ends of bundles flush. The tools Fowler uses would be instantly recognizable to the thatchers who originally covered the house. Only if a roof is seriously damaged does all the thatch need to be pulled away, so the straw visible through the latticework of the attic roof may very well date to the time of Shakespeare? ![]() The oldest one visible was probably laid down in the 1880s when Queen Victoria and Britannia ruled the waves.įrom inside the house’s attic, and even earlier layer is visible, perhaps as old as the house itself. He had to strip off some of the earlier thatch, and now four layers are visible, each 30 years older than the one above it. Unlike the usual hassles of having contractors work on a home, with whining drills, slamming hammers, and clomping boots, residents can relax inside and almost forget the thatchers are there.Īs Fowler works, he can see the handiwork of earlier generations of thatchers. “It goes down as tight as if you’re putting a nail in a piece of wood,” Fowler says. ![]()
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