Draft:Aisled Barns

Aisled Barns are a historic style of large, agricultural storage barn built on lines similar to that seen in many medieval churches.

AISLED BARNS

Great Coxwell Barn

The barn from the west

Unlike most smaller barns that are a simple box shape with triangular trusses whose ends rest on the walls to support the roof, the aisled barn also has two rows of aisle-posts (also called arcade posts) supporting the roof trusses giving a central aisle (usually referrred to as the nave), with a further aisle on each side. The central, longditudial aisle is usually wider than the side aisles. This form of construction allows for a wider span than could be achieved where the roof is supported on the side walls only. Sometimes there is only a single side aisle, or there may be an end aisle.

The width and height of a timber-framed building was largely dependant on the size of the available tree trunks. Aisled barns could be wider and higher using the same length of timber. When it came to the building’s length, from the medieval period, the unit of reference in timber-framed and mass-walled buildings became the bay, the distance between principal roof trusses. These bays could also mark out different areas of storage within barns and other buildings.

Sir Nikolaus Pevsner considered the interior of Great Coxwell Barn to be the finest of any barn in England.

CONSTRUCTION

All aisled barns have at least one porch containing a large doorway, enabling wagons to pass through to unload. Usually each aisle post stands on a stone base (stylobates) to protect them from the moisture coming up through the ground, and the ends of the aisle’s roof timbers sit on low masonry sleeper walls,. Sometimes the external walls were originally timber framing with weatherboard or wattle, but the panels were infilled with stone or brick at a later date.

Usually, the whole of the timber structure is secured by the use of wooden pegs, as are the stone or slate tiled roofs where these materials were used in preference to thatch. The timbers, usually green wood, would have been cut and shaped, and the various carpentry joints made while the timbers were on the ground. Timbers were often marked at each end with numbers so that once raised to position the correct ones matched up.

The photo of the barn at Great Coxwell and the detail diagram illustrate aisled barn construction. However there were many variations to the basic construction model and methods. This is discussed more fully in Structural Carpentry in Medieval Essex by Cecil A Hewett

DISTRIBUTION

Map plotting concentrations of aisled barns in England.

Aisled barns are most prevalent in the southern lowland counties of England, particularly in East Anglia and Kent. There is a further concentration of aisled barns, mostly dating from between 1570–1650, in the valleys in and around the southern Pennines. These used different constructional techniques, and often accommodated stabling and cattle housing in the aisles. To the west of the country the surviving large barns tend to be of a cruck construction.

A notable concentration in northern England is to be found in the Halifax Huddersfield area, where the wealth derived from a combination of farming and the cloth industry in the 15th and 16th centuries led to the construction of numbers of aisled houses and barns.

Probably the most complete database of aisled buildings to date is Nat Alcock’s ‘A Database of Aisled Buildings of England and Wales’ which identifies 2122 existing, altered or demolished aisled barns. This builds on the Historic England Listed Buildings Database. Alcock makes the point that while there is still scope for identifying more disguised or fragmentary barns, it seems very unlikely that many of these would be located away from the presently identified concentrations.

EARLY AISLED BARNS

Although most of England’s remaining aisled barns are medieval, excavation of a Roman Aisled Barn and 6th century Bath-house at Faversham in Kent by the Kent Archaeological Field School from 2012 to 2019 revealed that the building started life as an aisled hall or barn, part of the Roman villa estate excavated by Brian Philp in the 1960 Excavations at Faversham, 1965.

Among the most notable aisled farm buildings excavated in Britain is Meonstoke in Hampshire (NGR SU 616210). Excavated by Anthony King from 1984- 91. It revealed an exceptionally well-preserved fallen wall which was the south east facade. It seems the façade fell or was demolished sometime in the second half of the 4th century with a terminus post quem of AD353. . The exterior width of the Meonstoke is 15.40m. The length of the building King suggested could be about twice its width giving a length of 30.80m.

And at Crookhorn in Hampshire a Roman tilery and aisled building was excavated in 1974/5. The aisled building was a smaller rectangular structure about 11.9m wide and 19m long with flint wall foundations but no walls or other superstructure survived. The interior was divided by six pairs of large post-holes into a central nave and two side aisles.

Clearly aisled construction was well established in Roman times and may have origins in earlier Greek architecture seen in southern Italy. To quote Malcom Kirk, ‘The barn is a unique architectural form - simple, spacious, harmonious, its origins going back many hundreds of years to pre-medieval Europe. Through the centuries, it has been a multifunctional and versatile building, used as a storehouse, meeting hall, place of worship and even dwelling place.’

MAIN PERIOD AISLED BARNS

While some of these historic barns are associated with estates and large farms, many of the aisled barns we see today owe their existence to England’s tithe system. During the medieval period, farmers in England were required by law to give one-tenth of their yearly harvest to the church. The income from this produce was used to support the poor and the the parish, and to enhance the wealth of the church. To store this agricultural produce, the church built barns, known as tithe barns. A remarkable number of these tithe barns survive, and they are amongst the most impressive architectural achievements of medieval England. Some of these barns rival cathedrals in their size and complexity of their structures. They are a testament to medieval architecture, and to the power and prestige of the established church. See ‘The Best Historic Tithe Barns to Visit in England. Exploring England, Scotland, and Wales’ John Lienhard at the University of Houston, commenting on Malcolm Kirk’s Silent Spaces: The Last of the Great Aisled Barns, noted that: ‘ Wheat, along with oats, peas, beans, and barley, was a medieval staple. Most people worked in agriculture. They ate less meat than we do. They lived off stored grain. Some of the grandest of these agricultural cathedrals were put up by monastic orders. The Cistercian monks lived on technology's cutting edge. Their monasteries were the modern factories of the high middle ages. Surrounded by their farms, the Cistercians practiced the latest techniques of food handling and processing.’

USE AND RE-USE

The aisled barn could be adapted for the needs of the agriculture practiced in a particular district, and, no doubt, changed over time. A barn with storage bays for hay, rye, oats and barley down each side and a threshing floor in the nave seems a likely model. But other crops such as hemp and hops could also be dried and stored. Root crops such as carrots, parsnips, turnips and mangel wurzels were likely stored away from the frost after a plentiful harvest; peas, beans, apples and pears, too. In areas where livestock predominated the bays could be cordoned off with hurdles to house cattle, pigs or sheep, particularly in inclement weather. The open nave, a workplace used as a threshing floor, could double as an area for shearing sheep in those parts of the country where sheep predominated.

Aisled Barn Interior, Wycoller

It seems that sometimes existing barns were rebuilt as aisled barns, re-using the timbers from the old barn. Wycoller at Pendle in Lancashire is such an example. The aisled barn is thought to have been built around 1630 on the site of an earlier cruck barn which is dated at around 1533. Timber can be dated from the tree rings, proving that most of the beams were reused from this earlier building. Wycoller aisled barn has stone walls and stone roof and is less tall than many of its counterparts in the south east. The appearance of these large barns suggests a change from grazing to crops between the 1570's and 1640's, with the aisled barns being built within the last 40 years of that period. Cereal prices rose rapidly in the 1570's so the ploughing of poorer land became feasible and larger grain barns replaced cruck barns if they were found to be too restrictive in interior space. There is evidence suggesting that over the years the use changed from corn barn to cattle housing to coach house, and finally to its present use as a visitor centre.