On The Roof - A Thatcher's Journey

''An excellent, beautifully written book'' Patrick Galbraith, Sunday Times ''A rich and hugely enjoyable celebration of the local, the vernacular and traditional ... a beautifully written craftsman''s memoir'' Daily Mail Thatched roofs are like living organisms: each one a web of repair, replacement and alteration, shaped, dressed and re-moulded by every pair of hands that works on it. Thatching is one of the world''s oldest crafts - an ancient trade that roots us in nature, as Tom Allen discovered when he quit an office job to become an apprentice in Devon. Now a master of the trade, in On the Roof he goes in search of its history and future, meeting fellow thatchers, from the son of a lobster fisherman who thatches with a dune grass in the Hebrides, to a Syrian refugee who found peace among the seagrass roofs of Denmark, to one of the first women to master Japan''s 5,000-year-old thatching tradition. Eye-opening, beautifully told and revealing a tradition hand-shaped over centuries, On the Roof is a story of how we live with the land and how we have chosen to treat it.

Product details

• Authors: Tom Allan, Allan Tom, TOM ALLAN
• Publisher: Profile Books
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 05.06.2025
• EAN: 9781788167444
• ISBN: 978-1-78816-744-4
• No. of pages: 304
• Dimensions: 128 mm x 196 mm x 24 mm
• Subjects: Guides > Hobby, home > Home improvement, DIY; History, CRAFTS & HOBBIES / Folkcrafts, natural history, Rural crafts, Nature and the natural world: general interest