Context 164 - May 2020

40 C O N T E X T 1 6 4 : M A Y 2 0 2 0 in rural areas. An 1837 trade directory noted that many of the houses in Auchtermuchty were still thatched. Historically, local thatch typically used anything available, including turf. The Fife village of Kilconquhar, for example, had once been known for the quality of its roofing turf, as well as the place where several women accused of witchcraft had been dunked in its loch. Turf, once widely used also as a substratum for cereal straw thatch, is now rarely found. But there is good news. Fife still has eight thatched buildings, joint sixth most with South Ayrshire of all regions in Scotland, and a village with five examples. Two have recently been rethatched, which with ongoing maintenance should see them good for several decades. The first is the 1610, Category A listed, Moncrief House, located opposite the Palace in Falkland, a popular tourist village, on the Outlander trail. It is a substantial two-storey town house, rethatched in 1954 by Scotland’s last thatching family, the Broughs of Auchtermuchty and, more recently, by Cheshire-based master thatcher Peter Brugge in 1991 and again in 2018. The other, close by in Auchtermuchty, completed in autumn 2019, is a more modest Category B, 18th-century, single-storey weaver’s cottage, last thatched in 1991. Of the 40 thatched buildings in Auchtermuchty noted in a survey in the 1970s, it alone survives. The late Bruce Walker, contributing to the subsequent Historic Scotland TAN (technical advice note) 13 used some to illustrate signifi- cant details. In both cases the work was under- taken by Peter Brugge, using Tay river reed. The first reed beds were laid by landowners in the late 18th century to prevent the banks eroding and to protect reclaimed land. One of the first was in 1776 near Dundee and further beds were planted on the north bank of the Tay in the 1830s.The beds at Errol alone were estimated to be producing over 40,000 bundles of water reed annually within a decade. Three centuries ago reed beds covered large swaths of Britain but changes in agricultural practices, leading to better drainage and increased use of the land, resulted in widespread landscape changes. Extending to 2,000 acres, the beds had been managed and harvested continuously since first planted in the 18th century, becoming the main source of reed in the UK and historically supplying many thatched buildings locally. With the demise of the Tayreed Company in 2005, cutters in Norfolk became the last in the UK to work reed beds. ‘Tradition dies as Scots reed industry sunk by eastern competitors,’ lamented the headline in the Scotsman newspa- per, picked up by the Independent newspaper a few days later with the headline ‘Roof caves in on Scottish thatching industry’. The Scotsman article noted that in some south- ern counties of England one in four new-build houses in rural areas was thatched. Demand for reeds far outstripped supply, but the com- pany had found it impossible to compete against cheaper imports. In recent years, there had been a large rise in production in Poland, France, Turkey, Hungary and other east European coun- tries. Combined with poor recent crop yields in Scotland, this had forced Tayreed to close down its operations. The good news is that the reed beds are again being cut. A site of special scientific interest, it is now managed by RSPB Scotland to create a mosaic of habitats, ensuring different ages of reed to suit the needs of a range of spe- cies throughout the seasons. The cut reed is a biproduct, and it is cheaper to create the habitats by simply rolling or flailing it flat. The future is, therefore, uncertain. The reserve’s warden would like to continue cutting the reed: ‘We’re very keen to keep producing thatch as it’s part of the cultural make-up of the site, but we’re also realistic that money only goes so far and we have to look at what’s best ecologically.’ The RSPB reported in February 2019 that it had secured a funding boost from SUEZ Two of five thatched buildings in Collessie A previously felt-tiled roof rethatched in reed