THATCHING

Our new neighbours live in the oldest house in the village, a farmhouse dating from the late 1700's. Their predecessors spent most of the past 8 years doing it up themselves, while having three small children in the middle of a building site. However, they didn't manage to get around to rethatching the roof before they divorced and decamped. That has now been remedied; and it has been a pleasure to watch the process unfold over the past couple of weeks.

A surprising number of houses in southern Fünen still have thatched roofs. Surprising, since Danes put a lot of effort into their houses, with underfloor heating and wooden windows as standard, and an emphasis on quality workmanship. The easiest way to get a Danish carpenter to laugh is to talk about English houses, in which the main sewage outlet pipe is on the outside of the brickwork. In his view, the ugly thing should be hidden away between the - double - walls.

But is a thatched roof really a "pile of old crap", as my father-in-law used to put it? Seen with this admittedly unprofessional eye, it seems almost a work of art, as the unwieldy bunches of reeds are aligned, tied, and trimmed. Done properly, it is completely waterproof. Insurance premiums are higher, in order to take account of the heightened fire risk. But the overall effect matches the style of the house much better than alternative roof structures.

One difference from English thatched roofs is that Danish ones don't have any netting on them, they usually just have faggots on the top for decoration. I always thought that the netting was to stop birds from nesting in amongst the thatching. But there are birds in Denmark, and they don't seem to get in there. Perhaps they are like the carpenters, and simply laugh at British building habits.

Walter Blotscher