Keeping ancient craft alive
Lifestyle - Dutch woman Marika Leen became hooked on thatching as a teenager after she ran away from home and settled in Kilnadeema. She did an apprenticeship in the trade and her skills in ‘green roofing’ are now in great demand. But she has concerns for the future of an age-old tradition, as she tells STEPHEN CORRIGAN.
Marika Leen was just 15 years old when she first set foot on a roof. From that moment on she was ‘mesmerised’ by the art of thatching.
“It’s a very long story,” she laughs when asked how a young woman from the Netherlands ended up thatching roofs in the West of Ireland.
It all started when she upped sticks as a teenager and moved here, having fallen for the place on a series of childhood holidays.
“I was running away from home but I came to a place I knew,” she recalls. “I ended up in Kilnadeema, living with three bachelors who were all in their 60s – Paddy, John Joe and Tom Ó Fathaigh. They’re long gone now but they lived the old way of life and even when I arrived in the 80s, they still used a horse and cart to get around.”
One of the brothers “did a bit of thatching” and it was when he had an accident that Marika was propelled up on a roof to lend a hand.
“I remember how it caught my interest – back then, it was all local materials. The straw was grown locally and the hazel scallops [used to hold down the straw and known as a scolb in Irish] would be cut locally.
“I was really fascinated by it – that you could build a roof using just materials that were growing around you,” says Marika who still lives in Kilnadeema.
Going on to marry Marko, another thatcher, Marika says she pressed pause on her career while her three children were growing up but picked up where she left off about 15 years ago, when her husband gave up the trade.
“I used to be in the background, cutting the scallops behind the scenes and when he stopped, I did an apprenticeship so I would get all the proper papers. I did a lot of slating and stonework too, but for the last 15 years, I’ve only done thatching because it’s time-consuming work,” she says.
Her love of using local materials adds to that work, she explains, as she cuts all the hazel scallops by hand, providing a better product than the imported alternative.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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