Near the end of my stay in Ilfracombe, I took the bus to a little town called Lee, only about three miles from Ilfracombe if you walk the tors to get there, but the tors are sloppy in late March so I took the local buses. This old roof shows all the mossy stuff that grows everywhere in a place as wet as England.
I'm not sure how old this building in Lee is, but people must have been shorter when it was built.
I loved the purple growing out of this wall.
Spring narcissus with thatched buildings in background.
Nifty recently-done thatch on this building. Thatching is another thing that went out of favor in past decades but has also been making a comeback for aesthetic, practical and, I think, ecological reasons. It's more cost-heavy to install initially, but may last longer, albeit with repairs, than other roofing materials. It also provides jobs for the thatchers, thatch cutters, and thatch raisers. I saw a news item about a guy in Yorkshire who has gone back to the thatch -cutting job his ancestors did. The stuff grows like mad in certain areas near the sea, so the industry has just had to find markets and re-train people in the applicable trades. Enough upper-middle class folks have thought is cool to have thatching again, so it's another traditional practice moderns have found can make sense today for more than one reason.
Near the end of my stay in Ilfracombe, I took the bus to a little town called Lee, only about three miles from Ilfracombe if you walk the tors to get there, but the tors are sloppy in late March so I took the local buses. This old roof shows all the mossy stuff that grows everywhere in a place as wet as England.
I'm not sure how old this building in Lee is, but people must have been shorter when it was built.
I loved the purple growing out of this wall.
Spring narcissus with thatched buildings in background.
Nifty recently-done thatch on this building. Thatching is another thing that went out of favor in past decades but has also been making a comeback for aesthetic, practical and, I think, ecological reasons. It's more cost-heavy to install initially, but may last longer, albeit with repairs, than other roofing materials. It also provides jobs for the thatchers, thatch cutters, and thatch raisers. I saw a news item about a guy in Yorkshire who has gone back to the thatch -cutting job his ancestors did. The stuff grows like mad in certain areas near the sea, so the industry has just had to find markets and re-train people in the applicable trades. Enough upper-middle class folks have thought is cool to have thatching again, so it's another traditional practice moderns have found can make sense today for more than one reason.
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