The Last Straw

For The New York Times, Rukmini Callimachi reports from a thatched village in Suffolk, England, on the dying craft of long-straw thatching, and the feud it has sparked within England’s small community of “master thatchers.” Drawing on conversations with craftspeople and historians— and time spent alongside a long-straw thatcher—Callimachi explores a simmering debate: long-straw, believed to be England’s original roof material; versus water reed, which is more durable, easier to source, and imported from Eastern Europe and China. With only 20 or 30 long-straw specialists left, the people who can even tell the difference are disappearing, too.

“You can pick up the phone and say, ‘I need 2,000 bunches of reeds,’ and they’ll turn up next week,” said the master thatcher Bodkin Willows, 38, while it can take up to a year to source the wheat for a long-straw roof.

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 “gabled,” soaked in water and sorted, before being arranged in “yealms,” and pinned into place with “broaches” or “spars” made from hazel sticks that have been sharpened into staples.