BCD 2017

T H E B U I L D I N G C O N S E R VAT I O N D I R E C T O R Y 2 0 1 7 11 PROFESSIONAL SERVICES 1 UNDERSTANDING FORM AND FUNCTION The most obvious function of the barn was to store the grain crop and process it by beating small quantities of the crop with a flail to shake the grain out from the ears. This process took place on the threshing floor, usually, but not always, lit by large double door openings to both sides. Whereas it was common for barns to have floors of beaten earth, the threshing floor needed to be more durable. The large double doors to either side do not always indicate that carts were driven through the threshing bay to unload but often this was the case (if not, the cart would be backed out) and so the threshing floor had to withstand vehicles and horses passing over it as well as threshing. Threshing floors were usually formed in stone flags, timber boards or brick, timber being recommended by some agricultural writers in the late 18th and early 19th centuries as it was considered less likely to bruise the grain. Today, many barns have had their historic floors replaced or at least covered with concrete to facilitate modern machinery, but occasionally evidence for traditional threshing floors survives and so has evidential value. The distinction between the threshing floor and other parts of the floor of the barn could easily be incorporated into conversion schemes, reflecting the distinct use of this part of the barn. Once threshed, the loose grain had to be separated, initially from the stalks and then from the chaff, through a process known as winnowing. While a sufficient quantity of grain was built up through threshing, the grain and chaff mix collected after each round of threshing could be stored in corn holes. These features are most often found in aisled barns where the temporary storage area would be created by forming boarded walls to the aisle section of the bay adjacent to the threshing floor. An alternative form of storage was to create a raised floor area where the sacks of grain could be stored while awaiting winnowing, the raised floor keeping the grain off the floor and out of the immediate reach of rodents. The form of construction of such features may give them a rather ad hoc appearance and they are easily mistaken for later additions of little note. As a result, such features are increasingly rare and their presence should be at least adequately recorded, even if conversion cannot retain them in the new use. Historically, crop storage and threshing were, however, rarely the sole purpose of barns. Before the 18th century, the barn was probably the largest working building on the farmstead, and in many cases it would have been the only working building. As such, it would be pressed into performing many functions. In some areas there is evidence to show that barns which now stand as a single space open to the roof, were in fact subdivided, sometimes with floored bays defining areas that could serve as cattle housing and stables with haylofts. It has been shown in the Weald of Kent and Sussex that this was a common arrangement in the medieval period and into the 17th century. Some early barns in Hampshire also show a similar multi-functional arrangement in their primary form. Clearly, when considering the possibilities of reuse, the evidence for such subdivision and flooring is of high significance and is contrary to the belief sometimes encountered that barns were always single spaces open to the roof. The evidence for partitions or floors can be slight; in timber framed buildings it may be some void mortises in the soffit of the tie beam or mortises in the inward faces of principal posts. Such evidence, if identified, may easily be dismissed as signs of the reuse of timbers from earlier buildings rather than evidence of the original form of the host building. In one large Hampshire barn formed by two linked barns set at right angles to each other, one of the barns incorporated a three-bay structure that was evidently fully floored in its original form and had been reused to form an aisled barn. This earlier framed building, possibly a 17th-century or earlier stable, was probably of greater interest than the barn range (which was otherwise cobbled together with bits of other buildings) because pre-18th-century farm buildings other than barns are relatively uncommon. It did, however, guide the proposals for conversion in terms of where to insert upper floors within the barn. The removal of partitions from early multi-functional barns may have been associated with increasing yields or expansion of the arable area being farmed, with new purpose-built structures being erected for cattle in particular, sometimes within lean-to structures built against the sides or ends of the barn, bringing the original barn structure into a single-function use. FURTHER EVOLUTION Barns in many parts of the country show that at some stage there has been a local shift away from arable agriculture towards pastoral farming. Former barns in the Peak District, for example, had their threshing doors blocked up when they were converted to animal housing. This was sometimes associated with the development of regional specialisation or in response to market Brick threshing floor Stave holes for wattle and daub infill panels