PICTURESQUE ENGLISH COTTAGES AND THEIR 
DOORWAY GARDENS 
By P. H. Ditchfield, M.A., F.S.A., F.R.H.S. 
III. 
W HO has not sung of the glories and 
beauties of a thatched roof? It is sad 
to relate that thatching is becoming a lost 
art. Straw is expensive and slates are cheap. 
Moreover, the straw which is injured and 
broken by the threshing machines is very 
different from that which was cut by hand 
and robbed of its grain by the flail. What 
there is is scarce, since our farmers grow 
comparatively little corn now ; as our good 
friends in America and elsewhere send us so 
much of the product of their fields, corn is 
cheap, and the growing of it in England un¬ 
productive. The good thatcher, too, is hard 
to find. I have one in my village. He is 
an important person. He is an artist who 
can produce fine work, marvels of symmetry 
and neatness, and his peculiar and fantastic 
twisted ornaments of straw placed on the 
summit of his stacks, are much admired by 
all beholders. His art is still needed for 
thatching ricks, and sometimes for cottages 
also ; but he is not so clever as his father 
and grandfather were in the latter accom- 
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