An easterly breeze is knocking the heat out of the April sun as I hitch a bundle of hazel sticks on to my shoulder. As I climb the ladder, I can hear the inch of lichen beneath it crunching like dried seaweed. I’m thatching the Cott Inn, a Devon longhouse, and it’s a noteworthy moment as, after 13 years of thatching, I’m back at the first roof I worked on as an apprentice.
I am using wheat for the ridge, a variety called Triticale grown specifically for thatching. This year, thatching wheat is in desperately short supply after waterlogged fields last winter and a wet harvest. Fortunately – given the shortage – I am not rethatching the whole roof of the Cott, just replacing the ridge (the capping on the top), which wears most quickly as it bears the brunt of the weather.
Just the ridge: I keep saying this to pubgoers who ask what I’m up to. “Just” doesn’t quite do justice to the job, though. This is one of the longest thatched roofs in the UK, 115 feet (35 metres) of 14th-century longhouse snaking up a lane between Dartington and Totnes. It took two master thatchers and me over six months to thatch it, and ridging it will take me several weeks.
I look down the roof; its features appear like old friends. There is the first eyebrow window I helped thatch; the catslide where I cut my first eaves line. There is the shoulder of roof where I was told that thatching is all about turning circles in squares – transforming circular bundles into a square shape that fits neatly on to the roof. Squaring the circle: that’s how learning this obtuse craft can feel at the start.
I reach the top of the ladder, where the wind is tugging at loose ends. I’ve set up two parallel lines of ash sticks known as ledgers. Between these, I’ll form a diamond pattern with hazel cross sticks, which will both pin down the wheat and act as a kind of a maker’s mark on the roof. This is the exact spot where the pattern was first passed on to me, 13 years ago. In a satisfying closing of the circle, today I will pass it on to someone called Tom – my own new apprentice.
• The paperback edition of Tom Allan’s book about his life as a thatcher, On the Roof, is out on 5 June and available to order here
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
