Just sometimes, thatch needs fire. Controlled winter burning is an important tool in managing reed beds for thatching, to clear tangled vegetation and encourage the growth of straight, uniform stems. When not kept in check, the effect on wildlife can be devastating – as it was with the wildfire of April 2020 that destroyed a 3km stretch of reed by the River Tay. But from those charred beds something miraculous emerged: a vintage harvest of thatching reed.
Here on the Isle of Skye, I am using some of it to thatch a restored blackhouse on the north-west coast of the island. From across the Little Minch, the mountains of Harris keep watch. A pair of stonechats flick through a ruined building in the next field, surrounded by tufts of rushes (Juncus effusus). This plant was once used by Highlanders to thatch their roofs; today it has mostly now been replaced with water reed (Phragmites australis), a more durable material, which is mostly imported from abroad.
Reed is shipped here from as far afield as China, and is now harvested in just two parts of the UK: the Norfolk Broads and the Tay. Perthshire holds Britain’s largest continuous reed beds, and at its peak the Tayreed Company cut 40,000 bundles a year. The arrival of cheaper reed from eastern Europe in the 1990s drove prices down, and Tayreed ceased operations in 2005. Since then, only a small amount of reed has been harvested, but the fire in 2020 has produced the best crop for years. The RSPB has managed the area since 2018, and its site manager, Vicky Turnbull, tells me it would now like to increase reed production, partly in response to the global rise in shipping costs, which may make homegrown reed competitive.
The air is full of skylarks as I dress the final bundles into place on the roof, using some of the last of the harvest gathered after the wildfire. This winter’s crop will mostly be used to rethatch the Crannog Centre on Loch Tay, which – in another conflagrant twist – burned down last summer. After all, thatch and fire do not usually mix well. The owners of the Skye blackhouse have taken no chances and have stopped up its two squat chimneys with concrete.
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