My little cottage was unbelievably draughty, despite having walls over a foot thick! That's probably at least part of why I find it so hard to believe AS houses weren't. Also, I think it would be very hard work to maintain an Anglo Saxon house so it stayed draught-free, even if it started that way, and I don't know that people at the time would have seen that as important. NZ has incredibly cold and often draughty houses, and people here don't seem to see it as a particular problem - they just wear more clothes (and have dogs that sleep on the bed to act as hot water bottles in winter).
A fire will create huge icy draughts at floor level to feed itself and maintain the convection, in my experience.
Thatch is (said to be) less combustable than people realise; apparently it's possible to roll burning coals down the outside slope and for it not to catch fire. The inside thatch would be drier, of course, but there's not much energy in a spark. Otoh, if/when you get larger bits of burning material rising and getting lodged.... I would think that's a huge fire risk.
Oh, sorry, I was misled by your mention of walls. A lot of the reconstructions have wooden walls that are practically like lacework, with all sorts of holes where a knot has fallen out or the planks have not been properly butted up together - and I just can't see people actually living with that, even in a shed it would be impractical, walls with that many holes in would surely just rot away.
In my experience, the draughts in old cottages creep under doors or round windows and down chimneys or take advantage of temperature differentials, but they don't come *through* the walls.
(My Gran had a very old timber-framed cottage. There were draughts, as you'd expect in a single-glazed building, but it was a lot warmer than our Victorian house next door, which was phenomenally draughty and chilly as it had bigger windows, more doors, and stone walls that were nothing like thick enough.)
... I think you are right about draughts though. I find I am much less sensitive to them than Pp, who grew up in a properly insulated house with double glazing!
A fire will create huge icy draughts at floor level to feed itself and maintain the convection, in my experience.
Thatch is (said to be) less combustable than people realise; apparently it's possible to roll burning coals down the outside slope and for it not to catch fire. The inside thatch would be drier, of course, but there's not much energy in a spark. Otoh, if/when you get larger bits of burning material rising and getting lodged.... I would think that's a huge fire risk.
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In my experience, the draughts in old cottages creep under doors or round windows and down chimneys or take advantage of temperature differentials, but they don't come *through* the walls.
(My Gran had a very old timber-framed cottage. There were draughts, as you'd expect in a single-glazed building, but it was a lot warmer than our Victorian house next door, which was phenomenally draughty and chilly as it had bigger windows, more doors, and stone walls that were nothing like thick enough.)
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