The Olde Globe Theatre, Green Grocer, Bluebird Cottage: Thatched, Thatcher, Thatch in Dickens Village Thatchers

The Name Says It All
In the United States today, about 10,660 people answer to the last name of Thatcher.  While not in the top 1000 most popular names in the US, Thatcher is also bestowed as a first name for a boy.  Number 10 Downing Street was occupied by a Thatcher from 1979-1990.  This name is just a reminder of one of the most picturesque and evocative sights of the Victorian era, thatched roofs.

Dickens's Comments on Thatched Roofs
While we can look back on thatched roofs with nostalgia, living with them was not easy, and during the 19th century thatch began to be replaced with sturdier, cleaner materials, such as slate.  Charles Dickens himself commented on this transition in "All the Year Round", Feb. 7, 1863, p 512. http://books.google.com

Dept 56, Thatchers, 56.58297

...the beautiful...will fall before the practical.  I am afraid I must put it on record that the Pictuesque is in a bad way...it is inconvenient and unprofitable....even the old thatched roof is doomed...It harboured insects.  It was dreadfully inflammable, and lo!  The new barns are being built with coverings of slate....slate that is clean, and easily kept in repair....But how beautiful the old roof was!  It was always out of repair--bless it.  Half of it at least was covered with patches of dense green moss...it was the practice of the wooden structure beneath it to give way, and...the thatch would sink...The useful is the enemy of the Picturesque.

Roof Fire of 1613 Destroys the Olde Globe Theatre

Dept 56, The Olde Globe Theatre
56.58501

Despite Dickens's protestation, it is now believed that thatch roofs did not catch fire very frequently or easily.  However, once a fire started, it was difficult to extinguish, and the damage was severe.  Sir Henry Wootton provided an eyewitness account of the 1613 fire that destroyed the Olde Globe Theatre during a production of a play called "All is True."  Sir Henry reports that the scene was Cardinal Wolsey's house. As the character playing King Henry VIII entered the stage, canons were shot.  Hot debris from the canon blasts landed on the thatched roof of the theater and began to smolder.  The audience assumed the smoke was part of the production, and ignored it.  The flames kindled inside the thatch, and then 

...ran round like a train, consuming within less than an hour the whole house to the very ground.....wherein yet nothing did perish but wood and straw, and a few forsaken cloaks; only one man had his breeches set on fire, that would perhaps have broyled him, if he had not by the benefit of a provident wit, put it out with a bottle of ale. http://www.globe-theatre.org.uk/globe-theatre-fire.htm

What are Thatched Roofs?

Thatch for roofing was made from whatever materials were locally available and inexpensive, and could include reeds, straws, hedges, and grasses.  In Victorian England, wheat, or rye, or a mixture would be bundled together in bunches about two feet in diameter and staked onto the roof.  Applied by a quality craftsman, the hatch could last for 45-50 years.  Repairs were sometimes made by simply applying a new layer of thatch bundles over the old.  In Southern England there are over 250 roofs, some dating from the medieval period, that are now 6-7 feet thick, because the thatchers never bothered to remove the old roofs before applying the new!  With the advent of railroad and canal systems throughout England, alternative roofing materials, such as slate, became available, replacing thatch.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thatching

Christmas Village Buildings with Thatched Roofs

Department 56 has created about two dozen Dickens Village buildings that feature thatched roofs, attesting to their popularity in the collecting community.  Not only do thatched roofs provide variety in village settings, but their light roofs create a wonderful contrast with the surrounding gray or brown roofs glazed to look like slate or other stone.

Issued in 1984, Green Grocer was first thatched building in the Dickens Village series.

Dept 56, Green Grocer
56.65153

Bluebird Cottage, issued in Jan., 2011, is the newest thatched roof building in the Dickens series 

Dept 56, Bluebird Cottage
4020185