On either side of the lane, the tall hedge banks stand sodden and between them a field is washing away down the tarmac in a chocolate flood. The ash trees nod and bow in the wind; wood pigeons parachute across the grey sky. For the thatcher, it is not a day to be on a roof. I retreat to the shelter of the barn. It is a place of stacked reed, dust and draughts that on a morning like this becomes an ark; the last dry place in a drowned world.
The mind wanders during the repetitive tasks in the barn. Most of the day is spent bundling wheat for ridges (the main part of the roof is usually thatched with water reed; the ridge with straw). I use triticale, a wheat-rye cross with long, pale yellow stems full of natural silica that makes a new ridge gleam. I work in a stoop, making windy bundles – so called because they are easier to handle in a breeze than a full-sized “nitch”. I gather the reed then let it fall rhythmically from the crook of my arm on to a plywood board. This action, known as spotting, aligns the stems and ensures the butts are flush and easy to work.
It’s hard to describe thatching’s techniques to someone who has never seen them; harder still to parse its obscure vocabulary. Terms range from the baffling (“biddles”, “liggers”) to the re-purposed (“drifts”, “crooks”) to the simply comic (“eaves turds”). The last are a Devon speciality: a roll of wheat as thick as your fist that runs under the eaves to give them tension. They are used when the existing thatch coat is left in place rather than stripping the roof back to its bare timbers. Judging by the strata-like layers of old thatch on the county’s roofs, this has been a favoured – and time-saving – choice for Devon craftsmen for centuries.
Hours pass with no sounds but the tapping of reed on plywood and the creaking of tin roof sheets. My bundles and eaves turds done for the day, I fumble the padlock shut and step back out into the wind and mud.
