Irish school trains thatchers to save their iconic roofs

A new school in Ireland is training up a fresh generation of thatchers in a bid to save the country's disappearing thatched roofs, an iconic feature of the Irish landscape. In a hall in Portnoo students at the Donegal Thatching School clamber over practice roofs under the watchful eye of Brian Lafferty, one of Ireland's last master thatchers.

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"That's it, start at the eaves and work from there," said the 72-year-old, peering upwards as a student laid and fixed batches of flax straw on top of a purpose-built model house. "The tradition has almost died out, it's crucial to pass it on to the younger ones," the still spritely Lafferty said.

Lafferty's expertise was handed down to him by his father. He grew up in County Donegal, the part of Ireland with the highest number of surviving thatched cottages.

"When I'm up on a roof I can almost hear the music that was played inside in years past, I think of the lives that were lived below," he said. But he lamented that younger people don't have his "deep well of lived experience to draw from".

That makes it less painful to pull down a thatched house and build a modern one up with slate or tiled roofs, said Lafferty. "It could have taken three years to gather up the stones to build a thatch house, but you could toss it in ten minutes with a machine," he said with a tear in his eye.