| These cottages are generally built with stones and clay, or stones and sods, and covered almost every year with a little fresh straw, very ill applied. Such buildings have often thatch secured by stones suspended on ropes of straw, and hanging on or over the eves of the buildings, which eves are usually supplied with broad flags or slates, resting on the sidewalls, to carry off the rain water as it drops from the thatch. John Shirreff 1814uilt with stones and clay, or stones and sods, and covered almost every year with a little fresh straw, very ill applied. Such buildings have often thatch secured by stones suspended on ropes of straw, and hanging on or over the eves of the buildings, which eves are usually supplied with broad flags or slates, resting on the sidewalls, to carry off the rain water as it drops from the thatch. John Shirreff 1814 |
| The old houses are roofed with straw or heath, which is twisted into a rope, locally known as 'simmons'. These 'simmons' are stretched in close parallel lines across the roof from eave to eave; and when the whole roof has been covered in this way, some loose straw is put over all, which is bound down by a second layer of 'simmons'; and alternate layers of straw and simmons are put on until it is considered that the roof is complete. The outer or last row of simmons is weighted down by having long and heavy flagstones placed in the folds of the ropes immediately above the eaves. These flags prevent the thatch from being carried away by the wind. Robert Oliphant Pringle 1874 |
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| It is now 10 years since the first article on Orkney thatch appeared in Vernacular Building 15 . In that article the technique of creating a needled thatched roof was described with particular reference to the house at Gimps, a farm in South Ronaldsay. Later a detailed analysis of a sample of thatch taken from the Gimps roof was carried out by Headland Archaeology for Historic Scotland is reported in The Archaeology of Scottish Thatch published by Historic Scotland in 1998. So Gimps has become a significant building in the written record of Orcadian and perhaps Scottish vernacular building. The building itself, like other remaining examples of buildings with needled thatch, has fared badly in the last decade with little of the thatched roof now left. |
| In the VB 15 article, description of Orcadian needled thatched roofs was based on observations at 12 sites. In a brief article in VB 24 reporting the condition of needled thatched roofs in Orkney in the year 2000, the number of sites of known needled roofs had been increased to 21 though this included sites where the buildings or the roofs have been demolished or have disintegrated or there was vestigial evidence of having had a needled roof. |
| The survey carried out by A & P Newman in 1991 and subsequent work, together with Alexander Fenton's earlier descriptions in The Northern Isles show that the needled roof technique was probably widespread throughout many of the islands. There is enough evidence to suggest variations in the technique, such as the materials used for the thatch, methods of anchoring the loops of straw rope (simmens). |
| It would be wrong to suggest that the needled roof, that is where a sarking or under layer is made of closely packed straw or heather ropes, is the only thatch tradition in Orkney. If all roofs with an organic covering are included as thatched roofs, there is a variety of thatched roof constructions in the vernacular building traditions of Orkney. However the process of creating a needled roof will be described first. |
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The sequence of building a needled roof |
Five drawings show the sequence of construction. The first drawing shows a stone building with a roof structure of pegged couples. It is worth noting that the older pegged couples at Gimps have outlasted the more recent nailed couples. Few buildings still have pegged couples, more often the joints are nailed. The feet of the couples rest on the slightly tilted wall plate (or aisin or tekel). Though this is the more common arrangement, sometimes the feet are let into pockets in the stone walls below the aisins. Typically there will be four or five rows of laths each side of the couples. |
Drawing 1 – Roof structure of couples and laths in place |
The second drawing shows the roof being needled with the first layer of simmens. The lines of simmens are packed tight together to make a kind of tent and also pulled tight and fixed to the bottom lath. The simmens are under a certain amount of tension and in the barn at Derby in Toab, the bottom lath is located in a notch on the upper surface of the couple legs. |
Drawing 2 – Roof "needled" with first layer of simmons |
| Three methods of securing the simmens loops to the lower lath have been described: A - common method where loop is tied to the lath with a cord made of bent or latterly with coir string; B - loop is tied around lath in a barrel hitch - only known from Gimps ( how this is done is uncertain but probably entail detaching the lath from the couple leg); C - heather simmens looped round lath as at Estabin in Firth, described by G Hay, RCAHMS 1968. |
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| The simmens were made by hand out of bere straw or black oat straw or long stringy heather. The straw needs to be round and not crushed, and this may pose problems for any modern reconstruction. Occasionally the making of simmens could be partly mechanised with the use of a thrawcrook or cranked rope twister. |
| The third drawing shows a layer of inclined flagstones supported on the aisins and trapping the loops of simmens against the lower lath. A raised doorhead is shown in this drawing - a feature found in some older buildings. | |
 Drawing 3 - Inclined flagstones laid against lowest lathe | |
At the stage shown in the fourth drawing, a thick layer of thatch (30 cm thick at Gimps) has been applied. This is laid loose, probably starting near the eaves and working upwards to the ridge. Usually this layer comprised black oat or bere straw, but a variety of other materials would be used if they were locally available. Around Deer Sound this middle layer may incorporate large quantities of boss or eelgrass (Zostera marina). Bent has been prized as a durable thatch material. Rushes may also be used. Analysis of the Gimps thatch indicates that a layer of clay was applied early in the life of the roof - whether this was a common practice in Orkney is unknown. |
| There may have been a tendency for the middle layer of loose thatch to be thickest midway up the slope. Evidence for this are the occasional thatched buildings where the skews are not straight but have a convex curve. In this respect there are some similarities to the rounded thatch profile of traditional buildings in the Western Isles and the west of Eire. |
 Drawing 4 - Loose middle layer of thatch laid over needling | |
The fifth drawing shows the top simmens being applied with bendlin stanes inserted in the loops of the top simmens. With tightly packed simmens the bendlin stones are barely in evidence. The top simmens could be made from the same range of materials as the under layer. Old photographs of Orcadian thatched roofs occasionally show additional lines of simmens such as a horizontal line a little above the eaves attached to iron pegs driven into the gable walls - a feature seen in some Irish thatched buildings. In one photograph a series of diagonal bands appeared over the vertical bands of simmens. Old photographs also show simmens bands wound horizontally around wooden lums serving central hearths, and also to the wooden flues serving hingin lums. |
| In 1991 a building with a needled roof of heather simmons existed at Howes in Deerness, although was completely demolished a few years ago. Another building with the vestiges of heather simmons over a flagstone roof was found at Windbreck in Graemsay. |
Drawing 5 - Top layer of simmens being applied with bendlin stanes in the loops |
| Maintenance of needled roofs Straw simmens on the exposed top of the roof could be expected to last for a year or two before perishing while heather simmens should last for about five to seven years. The collapsing roof at Gimps has provided some insight into the maintenance of needled roofs. The inner needling in the older part of the roof at Gimps has remained in reasonably good condition over a very long period whilst the house was inhabited. This needling is stained black with peat reek, and a blocked up smoke hole and the presence of a pauntree indicate that this part of the roof existed when the house had a central hearth, suggesting the needling had been in place since the early 19th C. |
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Fragments of fallen thatch disclosed layer upon layer of decayed simmens (VB 15 p 38) , showing that when new simmens were applied, the perished simmens were not stripped off first. The bendlin stanes would be salvaged from the perished simmons and inserted into the loops of new simmens. |
The amount of thatch required to make and maintain a needled roof cannot be estimated with any precision, however it has been calculated that a layer of needling for the roof of a two room house like Gimps would require about 660 fathoms (3/4 mile) of simmens. It would probably take more than an acre of straw crop to make a new roof for such a house. No roofs now survive with top simmons. Thatch is now held in place with wire netting or fishing net to which the bendlin stanes have been tied. Photographs of Gimps taken in the first half of the 20th C show parts of the roof with top simmens in place. A photograph in the Royal Scottish Museum Ethnographic Archive shows a roof at Verracott in North Ronaldsay being rethatched with simmens by Willie and Robert Swanney . A relative of the photographer (Mary Scott) says the photograph was taken in 1965/6. |
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Other kinds of thatch in Orkney There is a byre at Gears in St Andrews parish which has three different types of thatch in the one roof. One end is a needled roof; at the other end is thatch on top of flagstone; whilst the middle section is thatch laid on divots of turf which is supported on laths. The middle section of this listed building collapsed last year. The laths are usually broader or there are more laths than would be found in a needled roof. Other examples of turf, or divots, used as the base layer for a thatched roof have been identified in mainland Orkney and Hoy, but may have been widely distributed at one time. The heather turf roof at Little Muirs in Hoy has heather divots laid up-side-down with the heather visible though the gaps between the laths. The 1991 photograph of a building with a thatched roof at Greens (at HY519041 not to be confused with Greens [both in St Andrews] at HY542031, where Fenton found a needled roof in 1960s) is an example of a thatch roof with an underlayer of divots. This building has a rounded gable of which there are, or were, examples also to be found in Deerness Holm, Hoy, Westray, Sanday and North Ronaldsay. |
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Turf as an intermediate layer above straw simmons needling, was found at Greenwall in North Ronaldsay. Straw mats or flackies have been incorporated into some thatched roofs. The use of flackies along the ridge at Estabin in Firth was noted in the constructional drawing by G Hay, RCAHMS 1968 (reproduced in Fenton's Northern Isles) and was still visible in 1991 before the building was renovated. At Hyndgreenie in North Ronaldsay there was a roof with a sarking layer made entirely of flackies supported on laths. There are still many examples of flagstone roofs with thatch or vestiges of thatch above the flag stones. The thatch may be taken down to the aisins or down to cover the lowest horizontal joint between the rows of flagstones on the main slope of the roof. Thatch may have been added to a deteriorating flagstone roof as a remedial measure, or have been an essential part of the roof from the outset. At Verracott, in North Ronaldsay, the byre has an underlayer of irregular flagstones covered by thatch - where the stone would have been not been able to provide anything like a weather tight roof. |
Historical considerations The neat roofs of overseamed and underseamed flagstone which are such a feature of Orcadian traditional farm buildings were built to be seen and not covered with thatch. These roofs are largely products of the 19th C, although the overseamed roof construction is the continuation of an earlier tradition. It would seem that in the 18th C and earlier thatched roofs predominated, particulary for dwellings, with stone being used for outshots and some outbuildings, though this is largely conjectural. Needled thatched roofs appear to be of venerable tradition, though this too may have changed and developed in the 19th C. The 18th C House Book of Holm (see VB 17) is a 'surveyors' book for farm buildings on the Graemeshall estate. We may assume that all the buildings surveyed had thatched roofs. Thatch and simmens are mentioned in various places, though there is no mention of needled roofs as such. All the timber components of the roofs are carefully listed. Some roofs comprise couples, maintree and laths, and such roofs could have been needled. However other roofs also had rafters, and if these are rafters as understood in modern building construction, it is not easy to see how these could have been needled. |
Needled Roof at Scarpigar in Tankerness |
In the 19th C and into the 20th C thatched roofs continue to coexist with stone roofs in Orcadian traditional farm buildings. Thatch often seems to be the preferred roof covering for dwellings. Groups of buildings in North Ronaldsay and elsewhere may have barn, byre and outhouses covered with flagstone roofs, but the dwelling has a thatched roof with a steeper pitch than the rest, and maybe curved skews to the gables. There may be later dwellings or rooms added with flagstone roofs. Although thatched roofs require a lot of maintenance they do confer advantages of thermal and acoustic insulation. In ten years much of the evidence of Orcadian thatching traditions has disappeared through deterioration and demolition. There is precious little left of needled thatch in Orkney. There is a case for forensic deconstruction of the remaining roofs at Gimps and Derby (listed) to gain detailed information about needled roof construction but it would need to be implemented as a matter of urgency. Written by Paul Newman, Scottish Vernacular Buildings Trust |
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