BEFORE INDUSTRIALISATION, organic materials played a crucial role in domestic building. These organic materials included timber for walls and roof structures and thatch for roof coverings. Others, such as blackberry stems, creepers and straw ropes, all used in thatching, were more remote from modern construction. Agriculture yielded not only the crop but byproducts essential to building. In medieval north Devon, the predominant cereal grown for bread was rye; the area’s thatch, at that time, was therefore dominated by rye straw. Throughout history, changes in patterns of rural land use, such as enclosure for sheep farming, have influenced the range of materials at the builder’s disposal. Agricultural practice has consequently affected the types of harvested material available. Land drainage also had a significant impact and in late sixteenth-century Lincolnshire it was said to have harmed the livelihood of the ‘pore man [who in previous times could] ... easelye get 16s a week by cuttinge down three or four loads of [water] reede for thacke [thatch] and fewell [fuel] to bake and brew withall.’ Even wild plants had an economic value for construction purposes. In Lancashire in 1637, for example, rights were exchanged between James Dixon, carpenter, and Clement Taylor, yeoman, for the ‘liberty of shearing one day-work of brackens for thatch yearly.’
Large timbers had the greatest value among organic materials, yet good forestry management was needed if a sustainable supply was to be ensured. By the eighteenth century the reduced supply of native hardwoods suitable for construction represented an important factor in the decline of timber building. Oak in particular had been a construction staple, but it has been estimated that just one cottage could require as many as forty trees. There was also new competition as timber was needed to fuel burgeoning industries such as iron and glass manufacture. By 1602, Richard Carew expressed regret that ‘Timber hath in Cornwall, as in other places, taken an universall downefall, which the Inhabitants begin now, and shall hereafter rue at leisure: Shipping, howsing and vessel, have bred this consumption: neither doth any man (welnere) seek to repayre so apparant and important a decay.’
Although the use of timber in British building declined from the seventeenth century it continued to appear in reinvented architectural styles, including many late-Victorian houses.
Though in demand, organic building materials were not without potential drawbacks in use. Fungal attack such as wet rot, and insect infestation could affect any timber exposed to prolonged dampness. Good quality, well-applied thatch could survive fifty or sixty years, but poor thatch might only last a season or two before repair was necessary. Attack from animals was also a problem. Birds were attracted to straw thatch, which provided nesting materials, and even wood could suffer. Woodpeckers, for instance, have been known to attack timber roofing shingles, and the British Museum’s rather ruthless advice to one owner, in the 1930s, was that he should ‘catch the culprit at it and have him shot – and say nothing about it’!
Despite Britain’s damp climate and aggressive wildlife, with the right management and protection, organic building materials could survive for centuries provided catastrophe of another kind was avoided. Fire was a major risk and by the early thirteenth century London was already attempting to control thatch use, due to its potential flammability. This issue was particularly acute in urban areas, and after the Great Fire of 1666, the capital also began to ban timber from the fronts of buildings. Though less prone to fire-spread, rural houses could still be at risk. Until as recently as the early twentieth century, chimneys of some Welsh cottages were made of wickerwork. Their occupants must have lived under constant threat of fire.
Fire was always a threat to thatched buildings. Long-handled hooks were used to pull burning thatch from roofs.
A restored thatched chimney on Burra in the Shetland Islands. Thatched and wicker chimneys were once common despite the risk of fire. (Crown Copyright/Historic Scotland.)
Both hardwoods and softwoods have been used in the past for British building. Oak was a hardwood particularly favoured for structural frames, offering strength, durability and workability for joints or decorative mouldings. Richard Neve, in the 1726 edition of his building manual The City and Country Purchaser said that ‘To endure all Seasons of the weather there is no wood comparable to [oak].’ Alternatives such as elm were also used for structural purposes, and other native British hardwoods played a supporting role. Alder, for instance, was described by Neve as ‘useful for Ladder and Scaffold poles.’ From the later seventeenth century, with native hardwoods increasingly scarce, softwood from coniferous trees became a substitute, frequently imported from the Baltic where timber was plentiful and of high quality. As Loudon, in his Architectural Magazine of 1834, stressed, ‘The timber used in any building should be ... of slow growth, such as the fir of cold climates (Norway or Sweden for example) ...’.
Large structural timbers for building had to be obtained from mature trees. Felling usually occurred over the winter months, when the woodland floor was clear of vegetation. In his book, however, Richard Neve recommended April since at that time the bark would come off readily for use in leather tanning. Before mechanisation, felling would involve cutting away part of the trunk base with an axe, then sawing through the remainder from the opposite side causing the tree to fall towards the axe cut. Wedges inserted into the saw cut could assist the process. The felled tree would be stripped of side branches before transportation by wagon to a sawmill. In the medieval period, simple trestles were often used by the sawyer, the alternative being a saw-pit. Sometimes, a rough saw-pit would be constructed in the woods, to lessen transportation requirements. The felled timber would be laid on a framework resting above the pit. Two sawyers would work together, one in the pit – the less desirable job – and the other above. Pit sawing could convert the tree into beams or planks. Such conversion of timber to a usable form required back-breaking human effort but by the mid-eighteenth century mechanical reciprocating saws, driven by wind or water power had been invented to aid the task. After conversion, the timber might be used ‘green’ for construction or stacked to season for joinery.
Timber shingles now enjoy limited use in British domestic buildings but in the past were found more often. This example is from Massachusetts, USA.
Long overlapping strips of timber make the wall covering known as weatherboarding. The lower edge of each timber is thicker than the top. This example comes from Kent, a county with a strong tradition of weatherboarding.
Timber laths being nailed to a structural timber frame. The laths provide a backing for a lime-based plaster.
Timber could also be vital in making stone, brick and earth buildings since, even when not obvious from the exterior, it might help tie masonry walls together, serve as lintels over windows or doors, or act as a supporting structure for the floors or roof covering. Timber might even provide a roof finish. Shingles are still used in Britain on some towers and church spires, but in the past sometimes also appeared on domestic roofs. Timber was more common as a wall cladding. Weatherboarding – overlapping horizontal strips of timber – is now most associated with sheds and outbuildings, but once clad many houses. In its most sophisticated form, timber cladding could even be cut to look like fashionable stonework. Stylish Regency houses in towns like Tunbridge Wells featured this alongside more conventional weatherboarding. Even when the final finish was a plaster or render, the backing material, attached to the structural walling behind, could still be laths of riven (split) or sawn wood.
The woodland provided a range of building products. In between mature trees others would be coppiced by being cut off close to the ground so that the re-growth would produce a cluster of shoots rather than a single trunk. Coppiced hazel and pollarded willow rods might be used to fix thatch in place, or within the wattle framework that filled the panels of a timber framed building. The useful range of products provided by woodland could be threatened, however, if a landowner was interested only in large, valuable trees. In 1803, it was complained in Shropshire that ‘a fall of timber in Pecknall Coppice this year ... means there is no Thatch Rods, Nor will there be any for Some Time, as they Brush’d the Bottom of the Coppice all Clear before they cut down the trees.’ Such unsustainable management of woodland was a contributing factor to the shift away from timber construction.
In a coppiced woodland large trees are left to grow; between them other trees, often hazel, are successively cut back in winter to produce spring growth harvested for use as thatching rods and wattle.
A curved cruck blade revealed in the gable end of a Wiltshire house. The stone side wall is a later replacement.
Walls of stone, brick and earth rely on a mass of material to support loads. This is less commonly the case with timber though in parts of the world such as Scandinavia, where wood is particularly plentiful, there is a long tradition of solid timber-walled building. Stave construction, where timber baulks are set vertically, is not completely unknown in Britain. It can be found at places like Greensted Church in Essex and the Frindsbury tithe barn in Kent; however, the vast majority of British building with wood has used a series of timbers connected with carpentry joints to form a structural framework. This framework is then clad and infilled with other materials to form the finished building. Two distinct types of framing methods evolved in Britain during the medieval period. Cruck construction was common in the South West, Wales and parts of the North. In the South East, East Anglia and parts of the Midlands, box-framed construction predominated. Cruck construction developed many sub-types – raised crucks, base crucks, jointed crucks – but in origin it involved the use of two large, curved timbers which rose the full height of the building, meeting at an apex to form the structural support for both walls and roof. A series of cruck frames was used along the length of the building to form its three dimensional structure, linked by timbers such as purlins that ran horizontally along the length of the roof. The first crucks of proven date in Britain appear to be from the thirteenth century. In their most primitive form, crucks were set directly into the earth, but the feet of the timbers were then vulnerable to dampness and decay. It therefore became normal practice to raise crucks on stone pads or low plinth walls. The construction process first required the substantial cruck frames to be pulled upright. This might be done with the assistance of lifting gear such as ‘shear legs’ and a pulley, but would also require manual force and assistance to stabilise the frames before they were fixed in place. Local volunteer labour was often called upon; one 1667 building agreement, for instance, specified that the owner was to supply ‘a rib of beef and a kilderkin [small barrel] of beer at the rearing’ of his house, presumably for helpers.
A plinth wall of knapped flint lifts the sole (or base) timber plate of a building off the damp ground.
Box-framed timber construction worked on a different principle. The frame was formed from upright posts that sat on a horizontal base timber – the sole or cill plate – and carried another horizontal timber – the wall plate – above. On this plate sat the triangular timber trusses of the roof structure. The posts were held in position by other intermediate horizontal timbers, and the whole was stiffened to prevent ‘racking’ (leaning) by corner braces that provided triangulation.
In both box-framed and cruck construction, the timber would normally be used ‘green’ – that is freshly felled or no more than part-seasoned. Further drying after construction would often produce cracks and ‘shakes’ in the timber, but could help to tighten joints. The mortice and tenon was the standard carpentry joint used in construction, albeit with many subtleties and variations. Scarf joints could be used to join more than one timber, allowing elements such as wall plates to be longer than a single tree but just as strong. Pegs, which held joints together, were well seasoned to avoid shrinkage which would otherwise cause them to loosen.
Framing a triangular roof truss of oak, on the ground in the carpenter’s yard. Note how trestles are used to support the truss while it is constructed.
A timber yard at Southgate, Middlesex. The yard retains a rural air in this 1873 photograph but the area was developed as a London suburb in the 1930s. (Enfield Local Study Centre and Archive.)
Timbers for the frame were generally prepared in the carpenter’s yard and brought to site ready for assembly. Carpenter’s marks at the joints showed where the timbers were to be positioned and connected.
The carpenter was not only the lynchpin of timber-framed building. Loudon, writing in 1834, identified him as the central figure in all forms of construction, since ‘it is the carpenter who forms all the patterns and guides for the bricklayer or the mason to work from. Nay, even if a cottage is to be built of mud, it is necessary to procure boards adapted by the carpenter to form moulds by which this mud is brought into the required form; or ... to supply what are called wooden bricks, to be built into the wall, for attaching ... the internal fittings.’ Carpenters’ tools included the saw, axe and adze for preparation of timber, plus augers, mallets and a range of chisels for joints and other details. Decorative mouldings, like those sometimes found on the underside of projecting jetties, were produced with planes. Like all other tradesmen, carpenters had a professional language for the detail of their work. Moxon, in the 1703 edition of his Mechanick Exercises, described the variety of ways in which the simple act of sawing might be phrased: ‘Master-workmen, when they direct any of their Underlins to saw such a piece of stuff have several Phrases for the sawing of it: they seldom say saw that piece of stuff; but Draw the saw through it, Give that piece of stuff a kerf [cut], lay a kerf in that piece of stuff; and sometimes (but most improperly) cut or slit that piece of stuff. For the saw cannot properly be said to cut, or slit the stuff, but it rather breaks or tears away ...’.
Carpenter’s marks were incised to indicate where timbers in a frame were to be positioned and joined. Here, the lines make Roman numeral four; the semi-circles are tags indicating the side within the frame; the circles are not part of the mark but pegs holding the joint together.
The axe was a tool once commonly used for the preparation of structural timbers like this substantial beam.
Decorative carving – old and new – to the arched door head of a Tudor house in Lancashire.
A rare informal image, probably from the late nineteenth century, which captures the scene in a carpenter’s yard unposed.
Thatch enjoyed a revival in the second half of the twentieth century. K. S. Woods, in his 1949 Rural Crafts of England, attributed this in part to post-war shortages of other building materials, but thatching was actively encouraged for its usefulness as a rural craft. Despite this, thatch has been used mostly for repair or recoating in recent times, and is an unusual choice for new building. Once, however, it was the standard roofing material for most British houses. It was inexpensive and readily available, though it did require regular care. Those materials, like slate and tile, which eclipsed thatch in the nineteenth century, had a much greater initial cost but offered longevity and easier maintenance. In essence though, thatch, slate and tiles perform similarly. All offer a layered covering that sheds water. With thatch, water may penetrate slightly, but this should be restricted to the top few inches if the roof is in good condition; it can then evaporate readily.
In the vast majority of cases, modern thatch is one of two materials: wheat straw or water reed. In the past the types were far more diverse. Straw might be derived from rye, oats or barley – whichever was grown locally and was available after the crop had been threshed to remove the grain. Other organic materials, now with no building associations, were also used. A lease of 1725 gave Sarah More a widow of Linley in Shropshire liberty to ‘take broom sufficient for thatching.’ Prickly broom grows well in sandy, acidic soils and was used for thatching in areas such as Sussex as well as Shropshire. Another heathland plant used for thatching was gorse. Notwithstanding the fact that it was particularly sharp and difficult to handle, gorse was especially important to the now almost-vanished technique of ‘solid thatch’. This took a structural approach quite different to all modern forms of thatch roofing. Instead of an underlying structure of timber leaving an open loft, solid thatch filled the whole roof space above wall tops. Poles were laid across the walls onto which thatching material was heaped in a number of distinct layers. Gorse was often included in the lower layers.
Thatch was used in all parts of the country, This example is from North Yorkshire, where thatch is now uncommon.
Bracken, ferns and heather could also serve as roofing materials. John Smith, in his 1798 General View of the Agriculture of Argyll, proclaimed the virtues of heather and regretted the fact that it was not more used. ‘A heather roof, well put on, will last 100 years, if the timber will last so long. It is astonishing that, in a country in which heather abounds, these roofs are not more common …’. He was less complimentary about ferns: ‘Next to heather, but at an immense distance, is fern, a good coat of which, if well put on, will last from 10 to 15 years.’ In coastal areas there were other possibilities. Tough, prickly marram grass was used on roofs such as those on the island of Tiree off the western coast of Scotland.
A squatter’s cottage of around 1800, Buckinghamshire. The roof is an exceptionally rare domestic survival of solid thatch. The roof is built up in layers on top of timbers laid across the wall top, with a final thatched space. No open attic is left, as it would be in a conventional roof structure.
Although wheat straw has outlasted other materials as a thatch type, the wheat grown for bread today has much shorter stems than in previous centuries. Older wheat varieties could be as much as two metres tall, four times the height of some modern dwarf types. Modern nitrogenous fertilisers have boosted yields, but have weakened stems; combine-harvesters chop up the straw after the grain is removed. Until the eighteenth century, harvesting was carried out with a reaping hook, and the wheat was then threshed with a flail or simply bashed to remove the grain. Alternatively, the grain might be removed in the field and the stems later scythed. All this produced a strong, long wheat straw ideal for thatching and a valuable by-product of the harvest.
Thatching straw is now often grown specially to ensure that the stems are sufficiently long and robust. It is also cut slightly early so that it is not brittle in use. Today, two distinct straw thatching methods are used which differ not only in the way the straw is laid on the roof, but also in preparation. The first is ‘long straw’ which is threshed by machine, crushing the stems but not chopping them. Long straw has become traditional to south east England, East Anglia and Midlands counties. The South West has developed a different straw thatching tradition, known as ‘combed wheat reed’. For this, straw passes through a revolving drum called a comber instead of the threshing machine. It strips the grain and leaves, and produces uncrushed straw lying in one direction and ready to be tied into thatching bundles.
Thatcher Stephen Letch and his team laying long ‘loggins’ of locally cut heather on Causeway House, Northumberland (property of the Landmark Trust). The loggins are applied in horizontal courses at a coat depth of 10 –12 inches using hazel brotches. The ridge is of turf, laid grass side up.
Stooks of straw for thatching, pictured in a north Devon field. Such a sight would once have been commonplace.
A threshing machine in operation on Horse Lane Farm, Wiltshire. The machine extracts the grain from the crop and as a byproduct leaves straw with crushed stems usable for long straw thatching.
Scottish water reed. The original caption read ‘a completely new thatch of Tayside reeds is laid on the poet’s [Robert Burns] birthplace at Alloway in Ayr.
Production of water reed for thatching, on the Norfolk Broads, has been encouraged and revived in recent years. The reed is now usually cut with a machine but it was once harvested by hand.
In addition to the two types of straw thatch, a third material in common modern usage is water reed, grown in wetland areas. Today, the Norfolk Broads are the centre of domestic production, after a revival of reed cultivation, though in the past areas such as Tayside in Scotland and the Somerset Levels also had an industry. Water reed requires carefully managed beds if it is to remain productive; to thatch a single building can require several acres of reeds. Water reed is cut annually in winter or every two years, traditionally with a reaping hook but now by machine. In the more distant past, other wetland plants such as bulrushes and reedmace were harvested for thatching. Alongside water reed, fen sedge is also cultivated, having the greater flexibility needed to wrap-over and form roof ridges.
Thatching methods, like the material itself, have varied considerably. In most cases, on top of the timber roof structure was a base, then an undercoat, then a top coat. At the end of the eighteenth century, John Smith described the way in which one simple Scottish roof was constructed: ‘ribs are laid on ... couples [the principal rafters forming the triangular roof structure]; poles or brushwood across these ribs; divot, or thin turf, covers these poles; and then the whole is covered with a coat of thatch.’ Here the base coat was of poles or brushwood, but a common alternative was a woven straw or wattle layer, avoiding the need for intermediate rafters. Wattle bases are occasionally still visible on the underside of thatched roofs to medieval buildings.
Thatching in central Wales often used hazel rods laid horizontally to hold down straw or rushes, seen here in a postcard of Tunnel Cottage, Penmaen Rhôs, Conwy.
The character of a thatched roof would vary according to local needs and traditions. In coastal areas of Cornwall, West and North Wales and Scotland, strong winds required special measures. Roofs tended to be shallow pitched – helpful for avoiding wind damage though not good for thatch durability since water ran off less effectively. Overhanging eaves might also be omitted to lessen wind lift. As an additional protection measure, ropes and stones were used to anchor the thatch. James Boswell observed this in the Hebrides in 1785. ‘The thatch is secured by ropes of straw, or of heath[er]; and, to fix the ropes, there is a stone tied to the end of each. These stones hang round the bottom of the roof, and make it look like a lady’s hair in papers; but I should think that, when there is wind, they would come down, and knock people on the head’.
A thatched cottage on the Scottish island of Tiree. To protect against the prevalent storms of its coastal location stones have been used to weigh down the base of the roof.
Thatching is a functional craft but, as the decoration of this block cut ridge proves, thatchers can also bring individual expression to their work.
Combed wheat reed (straw with uncrushed stems), employed here on a roof in north Devon, has a cropped finish similar to water reed.
Another technique, once used in western Wales and in areas such as Cumbria and lowland Scotland, was ‘thrust thatch’. This somewhat laborious thatching method involved thrusting knotted handfuls of straw or heather into the undercoat with a forked tool, known in the north of England as a spurtle. This method could also be used for localised repair when the thatch was decayed or damaged.
Thatching in the past was often a part-time or semi-skilled activity. The thatcher might work on hay ricks as well as buildings and do other agricultural work. In Sussex, thatching and charcoal burning were sometimes combined as occupations. Now thatchers tend to be specialists and the work can be as much art as craft when decorative details such as block cut ridges are incorporated. The finished roofs produced by thatchers are most alike in the case of combed wheat reed and water reed, which have a neat, cropped appearance. In both cases the roof’s old thatch is usually stripped back to the rafters before re-thatching occurs. The stems are applied with their butts facing downwards and are tightly packed into place with a wooden tool called a leggatt. With long straw, the material is first heaped and wetted on the ground, then drawn so that the stems run in the same direction before being formed into bundles called yealms. On the roof the crushed long straw stems cannot be dressed into place with a leggatt. The result is a roof which, even when clipped, has a shaggier and more rounded character. When re-thatching is due, long straw can be re-coated. Over time this can lead to a build-up of layers, sometimes as deep as one metre or more. On medieval buildings, the base coats of thatch hundreds of years old occasionally remain.
Unfinished long straw thatch in East Anglia, with its characteristically shaggy appearance.
Thatch is secured in place by spars of willow or hazel, which are twisted in the middle to produce a hooked shape. These are combined with sways, which are rods, usually also of hazel. When used on the surface of the roof they are known as liggers. Long straw thatch can often be distinguished not only by its shaggier appearance but also by the rods, visible at the eaves and sometimes applied in decorative patterns. Modern thatching may introduce metalwork into the process, with iron hooks used to fix the thatch into the rafters and mesh applied to the surface of straw thatch to deter birds.
A thatcher using a legatt to dress reed thatch. Note the neat, cropped finish which contrasts with long straw thatch.
A bucket of thatching spars. They are made by splitting and sharpening rods of hazel or willow, which are then twisted into a u-shaped staple and sold in bundles.
A thatcher using a metal thatching needle to sew through and secure the thatch.
Ties of wrought or cast iron have often been used to restrain outward bowing walls. Many different patterns can be found on traditional buildings with ‘s’, ‘t’ and ‘x’ shapes among the most common.
