The first Chimney

The house was being torn back, bit by bit...
It was time to seek help..in the form of The Heritage Council. I had been under the impression that if they saw the state of our roof, they would have been beating our door down to help us preserve it ASAP. So I sent off a reel of images pronto.
After a week or so of constant phone calls to them, The Heritage Council weren't too bothered about our roof. They sent someone out to assess it about a month later.
At first we were excited talking to this expert..things seemed hopeful.
But it was quickly becoming clear that we would need a bottomless pit of funds to preserve this old roof which was crumbling like a rotting carrot. Not only was the old branches supporting 5ft deep thatch riddled with woodworm, but it looked alot like Deathwatch Beetle was making a home in this wood too.
Grants available were limited and the chances of getting one was slim. Plus the unreasonable restrictions on what we could do and who we could have doing the work was a tight.
After our second meeting in 2008 with the Heritage Council's thatching expert, we decided to go it alone.
Ian has thatched before and is very very meticulous about his work. A little too meticulous sometimes. Although I do know that when we do finally get into our house it will be sound and solid, because Ian won't settle for anything less.
There was a bit of work to do before Ian tackled the roof...Chimneys were looking dodgey and needed rebuilding.

                                              Ian demolishing the old fireplace in the kitchen...

The hole in the roof is were the chimney was.

You can see clearly here how the thatch was made up. These are just simple branches from the surrounding area, then bound with handmade straw rope. Its a work of art.

                              The chimney rebuild was started...Only 3 more to do after this.

Ian had an interesting pulley system for getting the lime mortar (using White Rhino) up to the roof. We would get the bricks we had taken out and cleaned up, about 12 at a time up here the same way.