Ridge Styles are Not All The Same

The coat of a thatched roof can look broadly similar from the road. The ridge usually does not. Across Ireland the finish at the apex changes with the county, the material, and the thatcher. Some are plain. Some are far more intricate. All of them are a skill in their own right, and none of them come easy.

A flush, or plain, ridge follows the pitch of the roof. On straw, a layer is bent or wrapped over the apex and held with stretchers on both sides. On water reed, the butts are brought together along the apex and pinned. It sits quiet on the building. On a great many old cottages this is the finish that was always there, and it is the one that belongs there still.

A bobbin ridge is different work. A handful of long straw is twisted at the centre, folded, and given an eye so it can be strung on a scollop. Those bobbins are fixed along one or both sides of the ridge, and the free ends are pinned down. This was a widespread finish in Leinster — Meath, Dublin, Kildare, Offaly, Carlow and Wicklow all had it — and it turns up across the midlands in older photographs. It is rarely recorded in Ulster. A bobbin ridge is not a pattern cut into a block. It is straw work, made rather than sheared, and it takes a clean handful and a practised twist to keep the line even.

A block ridge is built up above the coat, often with a cut skirt or a scalloped edge. It stands out, and in wet Irish weather a well-made block can shed water very well. It is also the finish most often argued over. On many vernacular cottages it was never the local method. Conservation guidance treats it as a later import, and on a listed building it is often refused unless the roof already has a long precedent for one. A block ridge can be the right choice on one building and the wrong choice on the next. The pattern, the height and the cut all have to suit the house, not just the thatcher’s habit.