This week the thatch has arrived and we’ve wasted no time in starting this part of the building process. Our Archaeologist Claire Walton has the below update!

As I drove to a meeting on Wednesday, a lorry loaded with thatch passed me going in the opposite direction and my colleague Trevor and I both excitedly yelled “that’s our thatch!!” I knew by the time I had returned to the farm a few hours later, that there would already be thatch on the roof, and I was right. In order to work out what size each ‘bundle’ should be, we had to have a little test drive. (well, that’s what my very enthusiastic boss told me anyway) 

In the absence of archaeological evidence for the roofing material, we have turned to the landscape in which the house was found, and chosen water reed. We’ve got the expertise to work with it, and it provides a reliable, warm, watertight space which is so critical to our school education and events programme. In truth, a house can be thatched with all sorts of things, from straw and reed, to the more unusual heather, sedge grass, turf and even seaweed. 

Water reed can last up to 50 years, so there’s a good chance the life span of the roofing material is actually longer than the timbers of the structure itself! With the production of reed for thatch having shrunk to a very small industry in the UK, most reed is grown in Eastern Europe. We’ve chosen a batch which has been cut by hand, which will give us a much more authentic appearance and will not look too groomed or neat at the ends. 

We estimate something in the region of 80-90 days of thatching ahead of us. I can see an office sweepstake coming on as to whether we get that done ahead of schedule, like the rest of the building. 

Wessex Archaeology have joined us again this week, grabbing the unique opportunity to carry out a technique called photogrammetry, on what is currently still the skeleton of a building. 

This involves taking a huge number of photos which are ultimately stitched together using some techy wizardry, to create an amazing image of the building which can be viewed in 3D from lots of different angles. Apologies to any techy wizards out there, because I’m sure there’s a more sophisticated explanation than that! Personally, I like that it is used not only by archaeologists for mapping of large and complex sites, but it can also apparently be used by meteorologists to measure wind speed of tornadoes in the absence of other data – wow!