 Welcome to around the North West, now I say that Ireland's first ever thatching school is going to be built in the South West of the county because the county council has granted planning permission to a new and Ross bag community co-op for the facility to be at the Dolman Centre and the first of its kind in the country where people can learn to thatch properties properly and the largest concentration of thatched cottages in Ireland is reputed to be here in Donegal and within Donegal any shown has the highest number. There's actually a new book out called Irish thatched cottages a living tradition and it looks at that thatch cottages not just here in Donegal but around the country and it reveals the art and craft of thatch and the history and the stories behind many of the thatched homes and I'm delighted that the author Emma Byrne now joins us and joins us streaming as well on Facebook. Emma, good afternoon to you. Good afternoon, John, how are you? Good, good. Are you joining us from a thatched cottage from your home? Well strictly speaking it's not true because I'm in my little shed my very posh office out at the back but yes it's on the property of my thatched home down here at the other end of the country in County Wexford. All right so just talk us through the experience of living in a thatch. I actually grew up in a thatch cottage and not that it was very romantic mind you we but it used to be rushes on the roof back then and any more it tends to be a bit more sophisticated than that so what sort of a thatch roof do you have? So the thatch roof that I have it's a little different to what you're used to there in Donegal in that the material could be similar so it's a wheat and thatch roof so it's long wheat and straw and in Donegal they're more often than not the thatch is made from flax or from rye and I suppose another difference with the roof here is that the pitch of the roof is very high so it's much more of a strong apex triangular shaped roof whereas in north in Donegal the northwest in particular in particular coastal regions it tended to be rounded and more of an A frame and it was tied on with ropes onto backhorns which were stones that came out of the the top of the wall and it's really to do with weather and the environment in each of the places you know that there are lots of different styles throughout the country and in Donegal where you've got huge huge Atlantic winds blowing off your wild coast and it would it made more sense that you had the roof had a lower pitch and was rounded whereas here it suits the weather conditions to have a higher pitch and that affects roofs in different ways I suppose but there was even different styles of thatching within the one county like within Donegal in in in some parts of the the county say in the east of the county the thatching style would have been different to along the west coast and that was that was down to the weather and especially you know coastal weather absolutely that's as you as you move further east into Donegal that you have a higher pitch and different materials and it when you think about it it's common sense and the weather really influences you know the materials and and how people built these houses I mean all of these houses they're from they're from the vernacular tradition where local people used whatever materials they had locally and they use them to work with the weather conditions that were available to them and it's why it's very exciting to read about that piece in the Donegal daily about the thatching school and you would hope that it does reflect that I mean not only in Donegal you have a certain type of thatching but throughout the country there are lots of different traditions and most of the thatchers here that you speak to including the thatcher that worked on my own house here he is British and he learned his craft in Britain and he he has four apprentices now that are working on their own who would have learned from him and so that's that's a certain sort of style and I a thatcher that works in Donegal a lot either Kilpatrick he will have his own sort of style which is based on the environment of Donegal so there's lots of different styles and traditions and it's great to see them you know a thatching school dedicated to that absolutely and all the different styles are evident in your book and some some just holding up the camera there and some some brilliant pictures as well and it's not just we're not just chatting about thatcher cottages here because there's you know pubs and restaurants and museums and all sorts of buildings absolutely I mean that was one of the things when I went around taking photographs of all these different buildings yes there's a huge amount of I mean the thatch cottage for so long was this romantic image of Ireland that was exported throughout the world as part of our Irishness and if there is an old or vernacular building in a community you it's wonderful to see the community look after that in if it's in private hands it can be a public house or it can be a museum but I always remember up around Loch Naye there was a fisherman's cottage that still had its thatched roof and it was a community centre so people in the community helped to look after that so this old building that might have been disused or fallen down as so many of thatch buildings are because they're difficult to maintain was cared for by the community and there is a map in the book of all the places that you can go and see that still have thatched roofs that are open to the public so whether it's the heritage park in Wexford or up in Glen Column Kill up there near yourselves and you have the Father Dire Park which is a fantastic facility and you don't just see as you say the thatch roofs you see how people lived lives in these buildings how they were constructed from local materials and I suppose the lessons that we can learn from from that in contemporary times where we're looking to locally source buildings materials etc it's a huge part of our heritage and we do have this romantic notion about Irish thatch cottages and I can tell you there's nothing too romantic about the one that we lived on dirt because when it got wet it was basins and buckets to the rescue but you know things things are moved on now and obviously most buildings or cottages would have a you know a very not only a secure but a you know a waterproof a waterproof thatch roof and as I mentioned your book great examples of different styles and different sizes of buildings but it is we have this iconic image it's also the thatch cottage in Ireland with the thatch roof we do I mean it's it's there throughout our history it's exported I mean in particular to America I suppose and to tourism and you know the golden roof with the little painted windows and the little painted door but there I suppose what I wanted to look at in my book was as yourself you grew up in one I'm living in one so you have you have the reality of where you're you're dealing with you know rodents or birds I currently have two families of starlings living over the front door and so there's interesting battles there of a morning and you know and the costs of insurance there's only one insurer at the moment that that deals with that and the maintenance costs every year you have to put copper sulfate which is a preservative onto the the the roof to maintain it and so you know it's it's part of it's not easy it's part of what you you buy into but then you're aware of that when you go into it that you know you're it's not just a twee symbol that you're trying to keep alive for the sake of it and it these it's an important historical place and you know from the stories that go with it you know they're usually old buildings like my house that I live in was traditionally a great card house so all the people in the community used to come and play cards in the winter nights and you would find things like they're old layers of tach as as you know as it's come to being re-tached over the years and the tacher would find something from the last time it's been touched like a piece of newspaper from a certain date and there have been stories of wheat that goes back 300 years you know where they they've taken a sample of it and they've discovered you know what sort of plants were around at the time what kind of pollen was produced by the bees and you're you're it's a living organic thing I suppose that you're you're you're living with so that's a bit removed from this little twee image you know you're back with it the whole time and are they are they in decline or has as a situation now stabilized it they a mix of both I would say they're they are in in decline I one of the things I read when I was researching the book it was a publication by the Department of Housing from the 70s and the first line of it was tach cottages are doomed they're doomed but they're still here there's about 1500 on the island and but they are they are still disappearing I think there's only 20 roped cottages left in Donegal and you know despite but there's new initiatives all the time the you know the department recently have released funds targeting help to help vernacular building and the so it's constantly being talked about people constantly trying to do stuff and so far they're surviving and you know it's but it's down to private ownership and it's down to people having enough energy and strength to keep them going I think well just chatting to you Emma and and looking at the pictures in the book is bringing back a lot of memories and even there you mentioned birds and and how you you've uh for nest and we used to have nest as well and given that the roof was so low that the building was so low it was great as as kids you'd be able to go up and sort of try to peep into the nest I know we just realized back then we weren't supposed to disturb the nest but anyway one of them one of them thing is going up the book is called irish that's cottages a living tradition Emma Barton thanks so much for channel thanks very much John all the best thank you one bedroom at a time she's a push keeper