If you were buying a house in one of the wettest countries on Earth, would you choose one with a roof made of straw?<\/p>\n
Across England, buyers are paying extraordinary sums to do exactly that. Thatched homes, once associated with peasant life, are now among the most coveted properties in a country where nostalgia for a distant and mythologized past runs deep \u2014 a storybook landscape of shires, low beams and misty sheep meadows. Last month, the actress Sienna Miller re-listed her thatched cottage in Buckinghamshire for \u00a31.75 million<\/a> ($2.35 million). So enduring is the appeal that Richard Branson, the billionaire founder of Virgin Group, hired British thatchers to roof his Caribbean home.<\/p>\n But beneath the layers of thatch, a feud is simmering among England\u2019s tiny fraternity of so-called \u201cmaster thatchers.\u201d<\/p>\n For the most ardent traditionalists, the only true thatch is \u201clong straw\u201d \u2014 typically cereal straw, like wheat, which is threshed to remove the grain \u2014 believed by historians to be England\u2019s original roof. Then there\u2019s water reed, the more durable alternative that is increasingly imported from abroad.<\/p>\n For master thatcher Stephen Letch, the difference is unmistakable. The problem is that for almost everyone else it\u2019s undetectable \u2014 which is one reason long-straw roofs are going extinct.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s 20 or 30 long-straw thatchers left in all of England,\u201d said Mr. Letch, 66, who has spent much of his life trying to preserve this dying art. \u201cWe\u2019re the last and we know we\u2019re the last \u2014 and we know that once we\u2019re gone, those skills will be lost.\u201d<\/p>\n On an afternoon in May, standing beside a 438-year-old cottage in the village of Redgrave, in the county of Suffolk, Mr. Letch ran his rough hand over the edge of a roof he had installed himself. \u201cDo you see how it looks like it\u2019s been poured?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n Mr. Letch was pointing out the fluid texture of the dried thatch blanketing the house \u2014 a soft, seamless look, as though a thick golden liquid had oozed over the cottage and its eaves. This is the signature of long-straw thatch, part of a roofing tradition in Britain believed to date back to the Bronze Age.<\/p>\n Long before Britain was stitched together by a railway, roofs were made from whatever grew nearby, like heather in the northern highlands and reed near bogs and waterways. Overwhelmingly, though, most areas of the country used straw, a byproduct of the wheat grown to make bread, according to historians. It\u2019s a lightweight material that keeps homes well insulated in the summer heat and the winter cold, but it is also flammable, attracts insects and the spiders that feed on them, and requires costly maintenance.<\/p>\n According to one assessment,<\/a> 90 percent of thatched roofs in England and Wales were made of straw before 1800, with the remaining share split between water reed and grasses, like heather. Now that percentage has been inverted, as more and more houses are re-thatched with the more durable reed. But it\u2019s not sourced from the local river \u2014 much of it is shipped from Eastern Europe and China.<\/p>\n \u201cWe do get asked the question: Well, what is the value of it?\u201d Mr. Letch said of the long straw. \u201cTradition,\u201d he answered, before dropping his voice: \u201cBut you can\u2019t see the tradition because it all looks the same.\u201d<\/p>\n History sits front and center in the English villages that still have thatched cottages. The stretch of Suffolk where Mr. Letch learned his trade is name-checked in the \u201cDomesday Book,\u201d a survey of all of the land in England commissioned in 1085 by William the Conqueror. Nearly a millennium later, Led Zeppelin made a 19th-century thatcher the embodiment of English folklore on the iconic cover of<\/a> its fourth album.<\/p>\n And yet, a country obsessed with conserving its architectural past has quietly allowed many of its oldest roofs to disappear. \u201cIt\u2019s mad to say that we are preserving a vernacular material, but importing it from China,\u201d said Jo Cox, a buildings historian who wrote a history of thatching for England\u2019s historic preservation body.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not hard to see why water reed has won out. It lasts longer \u2014 up to 70 years, versus 40 years for long straw, according to Julia Shelley, editor of The Thatcher\u2019s Standard, the publication of the National Society of Master Thatchers. And it\u2019s much easier to source and to install.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can pick up the phone and say, \u2018I need 2,000 bunches of reeds,\u2019 and they\u2019ll turn up next week,\u201d said the master thatcher Bodkin Willows, 38, while it can take up to a year to source the wheat for a long-straw roof.<\/p>\n The reed arrives from overseas in bundles that can go straight onto a roof. Long straw, by contrast, requires a preparation so elaborate that it has its own archaic vocabulary: Straw must be \u201cgabled,\u201d soaked in water and sorted, before being arranged in \u201cyealms,\u201d and pinned into place with \u201cbroaches\u201d or \u201cspars\u201d made from hazel sticks that have been sharpened into staples.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s the training required to become a long-straw thatcher, which is so arduous it resembles a hazing ritual.<\/p>\n When he was a 19-year-old apprentice, Mr. Letch learned to \u201cwindshield\u201d a bucket of water onto the straw \u2014 a technique of throwing the water so that it moistens the fibers but doesn\u2019t soak them. On freezing mornings, he\u2019d use a hammer to crack the ice that had formed over the bucket, then dunk his hands in the frigid water for 45 seconds, \u201cuntil they were like red hot pokers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n When he made a mistake, his mentor struck his numbed hands with a hazel broach \u2014 or stick. \u201cIt\u2019s very Neolithic, isn\u2019t it?\u201d Mr. Letch chuckled.<\/p>\n To long-straw traditionalists, the punishing apprenticeship is part of the point. \u201cIt teaches the apprentice the values,\u201d said Mr. Letch. \u201cPerseverance.\u201d<\/p>\n But the very qualities that made long-straw thatching so demanding also made it vulnerable in a modernizing England. The demise of long-straw thatching began in the mid-1800s, when railways allowed building materials like shingles and water reed to be transported across the country. By the early 1900s, straw roofs were being stripped and re-thatched in reed.<\/p>\n