Barns

A **barn** is an agricultural building usually on farms and used for various purposes. In North America, a barn refers to structures that house livestock, including cattle and horses, as well as equipment and fodder, and often grain. As a result, the term barn is often qualified e.g. tobacco barn, dairy barn, cow house, sheep barn, potato barn. In the British Isles, the term barn is restricted mainly to storage structures for unthreshed cereals and fodder, the terms **byre** or **shippon** being applied to cow shelters, whereas horses are kept in buildings known as stables. In mainland Europe, however, barns were often part of integrated structures known as byre-dwellings (or housebarns in US literature). In addition, barns may be used for equipment storage, as a covered workplace, and for activities such as threshing.

## History

The modern barn largely developed from the three aisled medieval barn, commonly known as tithe barn or monastic barn. This, in turn, originated in a 12th-century building tradition, also applied in halls and ecclesiastical buildings. In the 15th century several thousands of these huge barns were to be found in Western Europe. In the course of time, its construction method was adopted by normal farms and it gradually spread to simpler buildings and other rural areas. As a rule, the aisled barn had large entrance doors and a passage corridor for loaded wagons. The storage floors between the central posts or in the aisles were known as bays or mows (from Middle French *moye*).

The main types were large barns with sideway passages, compact barns with a central entrance and smaller barns with a transverse passage. The latter also spread to Eastern Europe. Whenever stone walls were applied, the aisled timber frame often gave way to single-naved buildings. A special type were byre-dwellings, which included living quarters, byres and stables, such as the Frisian farmhouse or Gulf house and the Black Forest house. Not all, however, evolved from the medieval barn. Other types descended from the prehistoric longhouse or other building traditions. One of the latter was the Low German (hall) house, in which the harvest was stored in the attic. In many cases, the New World colonial barn evolved from the Low German house, which was transformed to a real barn by first generation colonists from the Netherlands and Germany.

## Uses

In older style North American barns, the upper area was used to store hay and sometimes grain. This is called the mow (rhymes with cow) or the hayloft. A large door at the top of the ends of the barn could be opened up so that hay could be put in the loft. The hay was hoisted into the barn by a system containing pulleys and a trolley that ran along a track attached to the top ridge of the barn. Trap doors in the floor allowed animal feed to be dropped into the mangers for the animals.
In New England it is common to find barns attached to the main farmhouse (connected farm architecture), allowing for chores to be done while sheltering the worker from the weather.

In the middle of the twentieth century the large broad roof of barns were sometimes painted with slogans in the United States. Most common of these were the 900 barns painted with ads for Rock City.

In the past barns were often used for communal gatherings, such as barn dances.

## Features

A farm may have buildings of varying shapes and sizes used to shelter large and small animals and other uses. The enclosed pens used to shelter large animals are called stalls and may be located in the cellar or on the main level depending in the type of barn. Other common areas, or features, of an American barn include:

* a tack room (where bridles, saddles, etc. are kept), often set up as a breakroom
* a feed room, where animal feed is stored – not typically part of a modern barn where feed bales are piled in a stackyard
* a drive bay, a wide corridor for animals or machinery
* a silo where fermented grain or hay (called ensilage or haylage) is stored.
* a milkhouse for dairy barns; an attached structure where the milk is collected and stored prior to shipment
* a grain (soy, corn, etc.) bin for dairy barns, found in the mow and usually made of wood with a chute to the ground floor providing access to the grain, making it easier to feed the cows.
* modern barns often contain an indoor corral with a squeeze chute for providing veterinary treatment to sick animals.
* In North Yorkshire cowhouses would have a muck hole (muck’ole in the local dialect) to allow manure to be deposited outside the barn without the cowhand leaving the building.
* In North Yorkshire a cowhouse would have a small door or forking hole (forking’ole in the local dialect) high up on the wall to enable fodder to be 'forked' into the baux or baulks (hayloft).
* Some English barns would have a gin gang, a semi-circular extension added to house a horse engine.

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