Field Visit

Date 9 August 2014

Event ID 1011613

Category Recording

Type Field Visit

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/1011613

Scottish Thatched Building Survey

NN 56217 34138 Listed as a late 18th to early 19th century ‘cruck-framed cottage and byre under continuous roofline’, owned by the National Trust for Scotland since 1992. The building retains early thatch, which was raked back in the 1940s and covered with a corrugated iron roof. There is visible evidence externally of both straw and bracken thatch from underneath the wooden soffit that runs along the eaves of the building. The roof of this building was the subject of an archaeological investigation in 2011, when the corrugated iron roof was temporarily removed (Moirlanich Longhouse, Killin - Assessment of the Thatched Roof for the National Trust for Scotland’, Holden, 2011). The report reveals areas of bracken, rush, rye straw, wheat straw and cereal straw thatch, which cover a substratum of turf laid vegetation-side down. Turf is also used as a packing material at the skews. The presence of wooden pegs throughout suggests the thatch was fixed to the roof using a ‘crook and caber’ technique.

Visited by Zoe Herbert (SPAB) 09 August 2014, survey no.221