Thatching may well be one of Britain’s oldest professions. Roofs crafted with layers of straw, water reed and other forms of dry vegetation have been a fixture of rural landscapes since the days of William the Conqueror, although there is evidence of this much earlier. Thanks largely to robust conservation laws, the thatching profession is still alive and well today. For 22-year-old Alfie Gleeson, from Hampshire, it’s the only job he’s ever wanted. “It’s a nice job – you’re outside all the time working in nice areas,” Gleeson says. “But it’s more than that – you’re keeping a craft alive. It’s something you can look back on and think, ‘I’m proud of that’.” To describe thatching as highly skilled might be doing the craft a disservice. Depending on where in the country you are, a thatched roof might be made of water reed (popular in West Country and East Anglia), or combed wheat reed (Devon). The former is carried in bunches to the top of a roof, then stitched by hand to the rafters in layers held together by steel sways. Longstraw, meanwhile, is made into layers in a process called “yealming”, a lengthy procedure in of itself. Gleeson earns just...