THATCHING A FINE ART 191 



to the thatch. It is, the tenant says, as good as it 

 was then, and, in his opinion, reed thatch of that 

 kind lasts from eighty to one hundred years! A 

 striking incidental proof of the duration of even 

 common thatch, and, if I may use the term, of its 

 antiseptic qualities, I owe also to Lord Peel. In 

 the spring of last year (1902), while an old cottage 

 at Ledbury, belonging to Mr Biddulph, was being 

 stripped of its straw thatch in order to replace it by 

 reed, a brown-paper parcel was found deeply 

 embedded in the roof. It contained a roll of white 

 linen, 25 yards long, which, together with the 

 invoice and a letter dated 1794, had been sent by a 

 firm at Gloucester to a tradesman at Ledbury. 

 The roll of linen was absolutely dry and unspoilt, 

 not even spotted by damp, and the covering of 

 brown paper likewise. How it got into such a 

 hiding-place there is nothing to show ; but for well 

 over a hundred years the faithful thatch had pre- 

 served and concealed the secret intrusted to it. 



Thatching is, in truth, a fine art, the finest, I 

 suppose, to which an agricultural labourer can 

 aspire. The fame of " the thatcher," generally an 

 hereditary occupation handed down, in long and 

 jealous succession, from father to son, spreads, if 

 only he be an adept in his art, far beyond his own 



