This stripping is almost inevitable when old straw roofs are rethatched with water reed, and very likely when older roofs are rethatched with one layer of new straw.
I had always assumed that when a house is to be rethatched, all the existing thatch was taken off; but this is not so.
Well-built homes sometimes lasted for ten years or more, although rethatching the roof was an annual event.
Having just completed rethatching a cottage in Old Malton, his new work was on a crib which would form part of the Yorkshire Agricultural Society's contribution to the York Minster Harvest Festival Service.
And I always make sure that the roofs of the servants' huts are painstakingly rethatched every five years.