These cottages, clustered around a fourteenth-century church, are in a dilapidated state, with chimneys leaning, patches of plaster fallen away, and the thatch decayed. In fact, Cowern noted that they had recently been saved from demolition. Here, he depicts a thatcher repairing the roofs with the traditional materials used in East Anglia: dark reeds from the fens and golden straw from the local grain harvest.
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Marking the drawing to indicate the mount line, Cowern chose to exclude the telegraph pole, a modern intrusion into the timeless picturesque. In so doing, he falsified his subject, suggesting an isolation and independence from progress that did not actually exist. His decision to exclude an anachronistic structure did, however, presage the 'improvement' of picturesque villages by National Park authorities. Aesthetic values, imposed from outside, predominate over practicalities, indicating the extent to which tourism was beginning to replace the traditional rural economy.
