A bank barn or banked barn is a style of barn noted for its accessibility, at ground level, on two separate levels. Often built into the side of a hill, or bank, both the upper and the lower floors area could be accessed from ground level, one area at the top of the hill and the other at the bottom. The second level of a bank barn also could be accessed from a ramp if a hill was not available.
[Brown, Kari]
Senior Thesis, Ohio University. Retrieved 7 February 2007.
Examples of bank barns can be found in the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
, in the US, in eastern
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
, in
Norway
Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...
, in the
Dordogne
Dordogne ( , or ; ; oc, Dordonha ) is a large rural department in Southwestern France, with its prefecture in Périgueux. Located in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region roughly half-way between the Loire Valley and the Pyrenees, it is named af ...
in
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
and in
Umbria
it, Umbro (man) it, Umbra (woman)
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,
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...
, amongst other places.
Bank barns in the United Kingdom
Bank barns are especially common in the upland areas of Britain, in
Northumberland
Northumberland () is a county in Northern England, one of two counties in England which border with Scotland. Notable landmarks in the county include Alnwick Castle, Bamburgh Castle, Hadrian's Wall and Hexham Abbey.
It is bordered by land on ...
and
Cumbria
Cumbria ( ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in North West England, bordering Scotland. The county and Cumbria County Council, its local government, came into existence in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972. Cumb ...
in northern England and in
Devon
Devon ( , historically known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South West England. The most populous settlement in Devon is the city of Plymouth, followed by Devon's county town, the city of Exeter. Devon is ...
in the south-west.
[
]
History
The origins of bank barns in the UK are obscure. The bank barn had made its first appearance in Cumbria by the 1660s on the farms of wealthy farmers: here farmers bought drove cattle from Scotland and fattened them over winter before selling them in spring. The bank barn at Townend Farm, Troutbeck in former Cumberland
Cumberland ( ) is a historic county in the far North West England. It covers part of the Lake District as well as the north Pennines and Solway Firth coast. Cumberland had an administrative function from the 12th century until 1974. From 19 ...
was built for the prominent Browne family in 1666. The great majority of bank barns were built in Cumbria between 1750 and 1860, and the last were built just before the First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
.[
]
Design
Usually stone built, British bank barns are rectangular buildings. They usually have a central threshing area with hay
Hay is grass, legumes, or other herbaceous plants that have been cut and dried to be stored for use as animal fodder, either for large grazing animals raised as livestock, such as cattle, horses, goats, and sheep, or for smaller domesticat ...
or corn
Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. Th ...
(cereal) storage bays on either side on the upper floor; and byres, stables, cartshed or other rooms below. The threshing barn on the upper floor was entered by double doors in the long wall approached from a raised bank: these banks could be artificially created. Opposite the main doors was a small winnowing door which opened high above the farmyard level. A common arrangement had an open-fronted single bay cartshed below the threshing floor, with stables on one side and a cow-house on the other. The entrances to these lower floor rooms were protected from above in many cases by a continuous canopy or pentise carried on timber or stone beams which are cantilevered from the main wall. Brick-built bank barns are less common.
In the 1660s, Sir Daniel Fleming of Rydal Hall in the Lake District
The Lake District, also known as the Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous for its lakes, forests, and mountains (or ''fells''), and its associations with William Wordswor ...
housed 44 cattle in his long bank barn at Low Park. The cattle faced the side walls and backed on to a central manure passage. In other bank barns in Cumbria the entrances, in the side walls, gave access to a cow-house, stable and cartshed; some 19th-century examples have four-horse stables, root houses (for storage of root crops for fodder) and feeding and dung passages for the cows.[
As well as the true bank barns that occur in a small concentration in Devon,][ a variation on the bank barn is also found in Devon and ]Cornwall
Cornwall (; kw, Kernow ) is a historic county and ceremonial county in South West England. It is recognised as one of the Celtic nations, and is the homeland of the Cornish people. Cornwall is bordered to the north and west by the Atlantic ...
where the upper floor is accessed by external stone steps rather than the hillside or a ramp.[
]
Terminology
The architectural historian Ronald Brunskill
Ronald William Brunskill OBE (3 January 1929 – 9 October 2015) was an English academic who was Reader in Architecture at the University of Manchester. He was an authority on the history of architecture and particularly on British vernacular arch ...
states that, although the British examples are older, the term "bank barn" is an imported term "to describe a type of farm building which is so common in certain parts of Britain that it has developed no descriptive term of its own".[
]
Bank barns in the US
Bank barns were a popular 19th-century barn style in the US. These structures were sometimes referred to as "basement barns" because of their exposed basement story.[Basement Barn Style]
, Indiana Department of Natural Resources, DNR-Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology. Retrieved 8 February 2007.
Pennsylvania
In the Pennsylvania barn
A Pennsylvania barn is a type of banked barn built in the US from about 1790 to 1900. The style's most distinguishing feature is the presence of an overshoot or forebay, an area where one or more walls overshoot its foundation. These barns were ba ...
, the upper floor was a hayloft and the lower a stable
A stable is a building in which livestock, especially horses, are kept. It most commonly means a building that is divided into separate stalls for individual animals and livestock. There are many different types of stables in use today; the ...
area.[ The barn doors were typically on the sidewall. With William Penn's promise of freedom and inexpensive land, many settlers came to Pennsylvania. Among these settlers were the Germans, who began to build bank barns on their land. Many other settlers followed this practice and it was soon the most common type of barn Pennsylvania during the colonial era. The Pennsylvania Barn is a specific type of bank barn with a forebay, a projecting floor on one or more sides of the barn. All forebay barns are bank barns but not all bank barns are forebay barns. Robert F. Ensminger in his book ''The Pennsylvania barn: its origin, evolution, and distribution in North America'' identifies three basic types of Pennsylvania barn: the Sweitzer, standard, and extended.
The English Lake District bank barn is another type of bank barn found only in Pennsylvania.
]
New England
The New England barn
The New England Barn was the most common style of barn built in most of the 19th century in rural New England and variants are found throughout the United States. This style barn superseded the ”three-bay barn” in several important ways. The m ...
is from a different tradition than the Pennsylvania Barn. In New England the barn doors are always on the gable end. The cows were on the main level, hay in a mow on the main level and/or above in haylofts, possibly grain storage on the main level, sometimes a tack
TACK is a group of archaea acronym for Thaumarchaeota (now Nitrososphaerota), Aigarchaeota, Crenarchaeota (now Thermoproteota), and Korarchaeota, the first groups discovered. They are found in different environments ranging from acidophilic the ...
room or workshop and the basement was used for manure management and other tasks. The New England barn developed in the early 19th century, became the most popular barn type after 1850 replacing the smaller, side-entry English barn
The English barn, or three-bay barn, is a barn style that was most popular in the northeast region of the US,Auer, Michael JThe Preservation of Historic Barns Preservation Briefs, National Park Service, first published October 1989. Retrieved 7 ...
and are almost always square rule framing.
Similar barns are also found in upstate New York and westward and Canada.
Design
The design of some bank barns called a "high-drive bank barn"[Visser, Thomas Durant. "Barns." Field guide to New England barns and farm buildings. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1997. 83. ] allowed for wagons to enter directly into the hay loft, making unloading the hay easier. Sometimes the high-drive was accessed by an earthen or wood ramp and sometimes the ramp was covered like a bridge to make it more durable. In the Pennsylvania barns the animals were housed in the basement level. In many other bank barns the tie-ups were on the upper-ground level and below the stables a basement usually acted as a manure
Manure is organic matter that is used as organic fertilizer in agriculture. Most manure consists of animal feces; other sources include compost and green manure. Manures contribute to the fertility of soil by adding organic matter and nutri ...
collection area.[Historic Barn Types]
Taking Care of Your Old Barn, University of Vermont, Vermont Division for Historic Preservation. Retrieved 7 February 2007. Many bank barns simply have a small incline leading up to the loft area as opposed to a ramp.[Photos of Bank barns, Various web sites. See]
. All Retrieved 7 February 2007. Some bank barns are constructed directly into existing hillsides while others are fitted with built-up earthen and stone areas to create the characteristic bank.[ The design is similar to ]English barn
The English barn, or three-bay barn, is a barn style that was most popular in the northeast region of the US,Auer, Michael JThe Preservation of Historic Barns Preservation Briefs, National Park Service, first published October 1989. Retrieved 7 ...
s except for the bank and basement aspects. The basement
A basement or cellar is one or more floors of a building that are completely or partly below the ground floor. It generally is used as a utility space for a building, where such items as the furnace, water heater, breaker panel or fuse box, ...
space could be utilized for animals while the area above, easily accessed by wagon because of the bank, could be used for feed and grain storage.[ Bank barns can be thought of as English barns raised up on an exposed full basement.][Basement barns]
Architectural Field Guide
Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission
Retrieved 8 February 2007
See also
*Pennsylvania barn
A Pennsylvania barn is a type of banked barn built in the US from about 1790 to 1900. The style's most distinguishing feature is the presence of an overshoot or forebay, an area where one or more walls overshoot its foundation. These barns were ba ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bank Barn
Barns
*
Vernacular architecture
Timber framed buildings