Sparks and Straw: Plymouth's Roof Law

The charming thatched roofs in today's English countryside have a history going back over 4000 years. English colonists of the 1600s had no reason to doubt the durability of thatch for their homes along America's eastern coastline. 

Traditional thatching uses materials like straw and water reed over a base of sticks or woven mats. The meticulous layering process, tying down bundles of straw, offers surprising insulation, waterproofing, and protection against wind and hail. Fire, however, was their greatest hazard. 

Within each one-room Pilgrim home was a place on their dirt floor for a fire for cooking and warmth. Their earliest homes, including their chimneys, were all made of wood and mud. The Mayflower passengers were not unfamiliar with stone construction, but wood was abundant, easy to shape, and ideal for creating fast structures with a brutal winter looming. 

A dozen years before Plymouth was founded, the Jamestown settlement to the south suffered a fire that burned many buildings in 1608, including their church and much of the supplies that had just arrived from England. The vulnerability of Plymouth's structures soon came to light as their main building burned to the ground weeks after they finished it. Two years later more Plymouth homes were set aflame from a fire likely caused by drunken sailors. 

In view of this, it is no surprise that on January 6, 1627, Plymouth leaders made a law that "from henceforth, no dwelling house was to be covered with any kind of thatch." 

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“The fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is.... If any man’s work burn, he shall lose, but he shall be saved himself: nevertheless yet as it were by the fire.”

(1 Corinthians 3:13 & 15; 1599 Geneva Bible)