A Reviving Craft I dared to report recently that architects
were beginning to speak favourably of thatch, and was taken to task for preferring sentiment TO comfort ; but the point was that the architects held the thatch to be both warm in the winter and cool in summer. The emphasis was not on appearance but on utility. How increasingly popular thatch—both straw and Norfolk thatch—is becoming and may become, appears in a special survey made by the Rural Industries Bureau, a very wise and practical organisation, which itself is training some few young rick- thatchers to become house-thatchers. The art has several incidental advantages. It is not seasonal. A good deal of at least the preliminary work can be carried on in the worst of wintry weather ; and after all, in old days at any rate, the harvesting of sedge and reeds used to be always celebrated in the Fens as soon as a bearing frost was vouchsafed and the produce could be carried off on sledges. Thatching is itself a real craft, and it is found that the best of the craftsmen extend their skill into such ancillary crafts as "the making of coiled mats, armchair seats and backs, log baskets, straw plaiting" and other like jobs. The Stationery Office has issued a half-crown pamphlet on building materials, tn which thatching is especially recommended, and the Ministry of Agriculture in its journal has given no little emphasis to the subject.
Previous page
