Half-Timbered Thatched Cottage
by Jayne Wilson
Title
Half-Timbered Thatched Cottage
Artist
Jayne Wilson
Medium
Photograph - Photograph
Description
A picturesque half-timbered and whitewashed thatched cottage in the village of Micheldever in Surrey, England.
Thatching is the craft of building a roof with dry vegetation such as straw, water reed, sedge (Cladium mariscus), rushes, or heather, layering the vegetation so as to shed water away from the inner roof.
It is a very old roofing method and has been used in both tropical and temperate climates. In most of Europe, thatch remained the only roofing material available to the bulk of the population in the countryside, in many towns and villages, until the late 1800s. The commercial production of Welsh slate had begun in 1820 and the mobility which the canals and then the railways made possible meant that other materials became readily available.
Still, the number of thatched properties actually increased in the UK during the mid-1800s as agriculture expanded, but then declined again at the end of the 19th century because of agricultural recession and rural depopulation. Gradually, thatch became a mark of poverty and the number of thatched properties gradually declined, as did the number of professional thatchers.
Thatch has become much more popular in the UK over the past 30 years, and is now a symbol of wealth rather than poverty. There are approximately 1,000 full-time thatchers at work in the UK, and thatching is becoming popular again because of the renewed interest in preserving historic buildings and using more sustainable building materials.
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Uploaded
January 25th, 2014
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