How to pick heather for roof thatching

Heather is a fantastic thatching material but there is no known historical evidence or documentation on the practice of heather picking for thatching. It’s an essential part of the craft and a skill in its own right.

In this blog Troy Holt, our former Thatching and Drystone Dyking Craft Fellow, shares a film about the little-known skill. They explain how learning to pick heather might help Scottish thatching crafts thrive.

Bundles of picked heather gathered at the side of a track at Mar Lodge Estate National Nature Reserve, National Trust for Scotland (NTS).

Thatching practices typical to Scotland

Heather thatching is a practice almost unique to Scotland, with a few examples in northern England. Heather is used mainly in the Highlands and Islands region, although we know of a few examples in Orkney, Aberdeenshire and South Ayrshire. Highlands and Islands thatching is critically endangered, as recognised by Heritage Crafts Association. It can sometimes be a challenge to find heather thatched buildings as they are often hidden away. As heather thatched buildings and those who thatch them become rarer and rarer, so too does the risk of losing vital cultural heritage become greater and greater.

As the Thatching Craft Fellow for Historic Environment Scotland (HES), I wanted to develop a film to explain the process for heather picking. This film documents an often overlooked and intangible element of Scottish vernacular thatching: how heather can be collected.

Picking heather for Lonbain Cottage

Brian Wilson is a Master Thacher and Dyker, and my Craft Fellowship host. Brian and I started the process of totally rethatching a heather-thatched building at Lonbain Cottage, Applecross in September of 2023. We did a big heather pick for that. We pick heather specifically for thatching ourselves as you cannot buy it in and it must be done by hand.

For this film, we again picked heather to use at Lonbain, this time to finish what we started in 2023, and to repair some damage sustained to the building in the time since. We gained permission from Natural Trust for Scotland to pick heather on their land at Mar Lodge Estate National Nature Reserve. The pick lasted a week in June this year and saw eight pickers gather a total of 174 bundles of heather.

Troy Holt, HES Thatching Craft Fellow, during the heather pick at Mar Lodge Estate National Nature Reserve, NTS.

Key moments in the film

Finding a good heather picking site is a time-consuming task that involves liaising with forestry, estates, private landowners, and community interest groups. And lots of driving up and down tracks. A few rules of thumb for finding a good location can be followed.

Good heather vs bad heather. When looking for good heather, you must keep in mind what you want it to do on the roof. With thatching the idea is to shed water as quickly as possible, therefore you want your material to do so to the best of its ability.

One of the heather pickers during the June pick, Uma, is picking (or pulling) heather.

Watch us demonstrate heather picking. We provide tips on how to pick and bundle heather.

Heather picking for thatching can be sustainable. Heather picking in this way is not an environmentally damaging process; despite the amounts we need to thatch a roof. The idea that this involves clear felling large swathes of heather isn’t true by virtue of the fact that we can only use heather of a certain quality, therefore we can only pick a small amount out of any one area.

Heather picking requires a lot of hands and can be a positive communal experience. It’s also a fantastic opportunity to involve people in traditional crafts or exposing people to traditional crafts who otherwise might not know it even exists.

One of the heather pickers during the June pick, Shay is carrying a heather bundle to the pile by the track.

What will we use the film for?

In the future we’d like to use this film in a myriad of different ways. Not only as a piece of archival footage, but also as a tutorial video we can show to folk who want to come heather picking with us, so they have an idea of what to expect. This would also serve as a kind of backup, in case heather thatching as a skill becomes extinct and needs reviving at some point in the future.

Heather picking has introduced people to the craft

Heather picking is probably the main skill I have passed on to others. That has been the regular thing every year, getting a band together of about eight people to do heather picking. This has introduced a whole bunch of people to the craft. And, some of those people have gone on to do a little bit of thatching with us.

The heather picking team sitting on their morning’s work, a heather pile. From top left: Brian, Katie, Joseph, Ethan, Millie, Uma, Shay, James and Troy.

Support from the HES Craft Fellowship

The HES Craft Fellowship programme has been instrumental in the making of this film. I’ve been exposed to so many fantastic opportunities and people in a way that is very encouraging of you to engage in your own ideas and projects.

Brian repairing the heather thatch on the roof at Lonbain, Applecross.

This film came about from my own research into heather thatching and realising we didn’t have any information about the picking of heather; and yet being so immersed in the process and the skill of it, I felt it needed to be documented. It was only with the encouragement of my mentors at HES that we were able to create this resource.

Cottage at Lonbain, Applecross, photographed in 1991 before repairs.

Watch the film

Find out more

Read our pages on thatched roofs, one of Scotland’s oldest building crafts. Find out what we’re doing to celebrate and protect thatching skills.

Find out more about our programmes and how to learn traditional skills with us.