Institute of Carpenters

An overview of the farm buildings of the Chilterns to the southwest of the M40 motorway. How the external features of threshing barns, stables, and other farm buildings, their similarities and differences, are related to the history and topography of the area. The wall and roof structures of some examples (particularly barns) are described. The age of the buildings and the use and reuse of different timbers are discussed, and details such as joints and carpenters’ marks are touched on.

Farms have existed in this country since our remote ancestors stopped hunting and gathering and settled down in clearings in the forest. They built houses and buildings where the work of the farm was carried out. Today, we can still see some farmsteads that are hundreds of years old. They fit in with their landscape because of the materials they are made from and their position. They were built mostly by the people who used them. These are what we call traditional farm buildings. They are often distinctive to the region they are in.

The area described here is the southern part of the Chilterns between the M40 motorway and the river Thames. For historical reasons, most of the area was dominated by Henley-on-Thames. The river bends and narrows above Henley, and it was less easy to navigate, so Henley became the main port for taking grain, malt, and wood to the London markets. The hinterland of Marlow is also included in the descriptions of buildings.

So what would we expect to be distinctive about the farms in this area?

In the Chilterns, there were many small mixed farms. The buildings were often arranged around a U-shaped courtyard. Sometimes the farmhouse made up the fourth side of the yard, and sometimes it was at one side. The other buildings included a threshing barn, granary, stables, cart shed, and housing for animals such as cows, pigs, and hens. Where cows were kept, there would be a milking parlor. There was sometimes a dovecot, or doves were kept above one of the other buildings. In the South Oxfordshire farms nearer Henley, there were often separate barns for wheat and barley.

 

In the well-wooded Chilterns, where timber was abundant, many buildings were timber-framed. The barns in particular were clad with weatherboarding. Oak was the preferred timber for construction, although elm and chestnut were also used. The boarding would often be elm, although the later barns would use imported softwood.

However, carpenters were always pragmatic and often did not use new wood. The number of timbers used in barns that obviously came from elsewhere gave rise to the myth of ships’ timbers. It is extremely unlikely that ships were brought up the Thames to be dismantled and used for building barns (or timber-framed houses). The shapes are wrong for a start. So, timber from demolished or fallen-down buildings would have been used again in humbler construction—oak was far too valuable to be just discarded, and sawing weathered oak for the fire would be a daunting task. The other explanation, which would probably apply to houses rather than barns, is that the oak used was of the same quality as that needed for naval vessels.

The practice of reusing timber makes dating farm buildings difficult

While timber-framed buildings would perhaps be the first choice and there are many of them, mass walling is also common. We associate the Chilterns with chalk, and some of this is suitable for building, especially around Medmenham. Chalk blocks used for construction are often known as clunch. On top of the chalk is a layer of clay with flints. Flint is common all over the area for whole buildings and for the base walls in timber-framed buildings. The clay was used for bricks from an early time and is particularly widely used to reinforce the flint at corners and window openings. Observation shows that the majority of the farmsteads include a combination of these materials—using appropriately whatever is to hand or what the building’s use demanded. (fig 1)

Farmhouses are often very interesting buildings, with parts of them at least belonging to the time when the land was first farmed. They were less likely to be knocked down and rebuilt than houses in towns and villages, but of course, they have mostly been much altered to accommodate the needs of their occupants. Now, many are not connected with the land at all and, in this area, have become attractive country residences.
To illustrate the carpentry of farm buildings, the rest of this article will concentrate on the barns. Most of them in this area date from the 17th and 18th centuries. Many books about farm buildings and the countryside explain how a threshing barn was used. There are good diagrams in “Traditional Farm Buildings of Britain” by R.W. Brunskill.

The timber barns are invariably built to the same pattern as the timber-framed houses. The earliest houses used a cruck-framed construction, and there are still some in this area, but there do not seem to be any cruck-framed barns remaining in South Oxfordshire or Wycombe Districts. Perhaps someone reading this knows where there is one?

The standard plan for barns from the 15th to 19th centuries is the box-frame or post-and-truss construction. Basically, it is a box made of upright posts joined along the length of the building by cills and wall plates. The building is divided into bays by trusses, which span the width and give stability. The walls are completed with posts, rails, and struts and have bracing timbers to prevent the building from moving sideways. This is such a lovely, explicit architectural form and so easy to understand. You just need to look at a barn to understand all the timber-framed houses. There are hundreds of these barns in the Chilterns, but although their form is identical, the details are all different, and we can see the imprint of the local carpenter and builder. The wide time range for these buildings makes it difficult to age them, and all the details of saw marks and the use of pegs or nails give some clues.

 

The construction method for the barns is also explicit. Although there is usually not much in the way of a foundation, there is always a base wall to keep the timber cill away from the ground. These were often made of flint, or flint and brick, and vary in height from about 1 foot (30 cm) to about half the wall height. Sometimes a whole wall will be made of brick or flint. While the bricklayer was busy, the carpenter was cutting the cill, main posts, wall plates, tie beams, and various other posts and struts that make up the structure of the bays of the box. Wherever he had to join timbers, he would mark them so they could be taken apart and reassembled. I have seen these numbers in many of the barns. The work might take place near the position of the barn or in a carpenter’s workshop, as happens today. The ubiquitous mortice and tenon joint was used to attach the different parts to each other. The long wall plates and purlins have to be jointed with scarf joints. It is not always easy to see the type until they fail, but the number and position of the pegs give a clue. Perhaps the status of the building is reflected in the elaborateness of the scarf joints—or the skill of the carpenter?

At the top of the post, the lap dovetail joint was the standard method for fixing the wall plate and tie beam to the main post. All these joints in oak must have needed a supply of sharp chisels. Peg making too would have been a time-consuming task.

Some barns vary from the standard box by having aisles. I am sure you are familiar with aisles in churches, but many barns have an extra space at the side which is also called an aisle. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish a true aisle from an outshot that has been covered with the barn roof and the cladding of the barn removed. Usually, the nail holes for the cladding can be seen and empty mortices where the rails and posts would have been. The aisles would have provided extra storage space or been converted to animal housing when the need arose.

The other aisled barns, which you may have visited and marveled at the ancient carpentry, are the monastic barns. These may be stone, brick, or timber and are the agricultural equivalent of the cathedral. There are no monastic barns in the area I am talking about, but we do have a huge barn at Ipsden, and there were similar barns at Benson and at Ewelme that have now been converted to other uses. These represent the storage space that was needed to accommodate the grain for the maltings of Henley and thence to the London markets.

A further feature of nearly every barn in this area is the porch or cartstead. These can be gable-ended (Buckinghamshire pattern) or hipped (Berkshire pattern, but also found in South Oxfordshire).

The carpentry of the roofs of barns represents the various solutions to the problem of combining stability with storage space.

There are several standard solutions. Walter Rose, writing in his book The Village Carpenter in 1937, explained how it could be done and there are many examples of his design in 19th and 20th-century farm buildings. However, what we see in the older barns are earlier solutions to the problem. In our part of the world, they seem to be modest in comparison to the crown posts of Essex and other places.

The earliest examples are king post construction where a single post connects the truss to a collar between the purlins, but the commonest roofs in the east part of the area use queen posts and queen struts. In this form, two posts or struts are used between the truss beam and the collar. In other versions, raking struts go to the purlins without the collar. (Figs 3a and 3b)

 

 

A further variation is the cranked or curved upper principals, where a strengthened principal rafter continues to and upper purlins. This is common in the west of the area. (Fig 4)

 

 

When the timber frame was complete, the roof was clad. In the 18th century, the tiling would have been the bricklayer’s job while the carpenter finished off the inside with the construction of the threshing floor. A good description of the importance of threshing floors can be found in The Village Carpenter.

I cannot leave you with the impression that you can see a newly finished threshing barn today. Many of them were obsolete for their intended use within a few years of them being built. Of course, farmers valued the storage space, and straw was still kept in the barns after steam-driven threshing machines and combine harvesters took over from the flail. Others were used for animals or housed grain dryers and storage silos. Like any building, repairs were needed, and the extensive use of iron straps and nailed strengthening pieces again adds to the confusion when trying to judge the age of the buildings.

Modern farming methods have meant that traditional farm buildings have become almost entirely redundant and conversions to other uses are very common. These can be done sensitively and from the outside at least still contribute to the special quality of the Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). However, if future generations are to appreciate the work that was done by their forefathers by looking at the buildings, re-use is much more appropriate than full conversion. Barns make much better carpenters’ workshops than houses!

Acknowledgements: I should like to thank all the farmers who have let me see their buildings, Pauline Wilkinson for helpful comments and photo Fig 2, and Chris Addison who encouraged me to give the talk and write this article.

Barbara Wallis

References:
1. Townley, Simon, Henley-on-Thames: Town, Trade and River 2009
2. Brunskill, R. W., Traditional Farm Buildings of Britain 1999
3. Alcock, Nat and Miles, Dan, The Medieval Peasant House in Midland England 2013
4. Rose, Walter, The Village Carpenter 1973 republishing of 1937 original
Bibliography: Brunskill, R. W., Illustrated Handbook of Vernacular Architecture 3rd Edition 1987 Brunskill, R. W., Timber Building in Britain 2nd Edition 1994 Harris, R., Discovering Timber Framed Buildings 1978 Hewett, Cecil A., English Historic Carpentry 1980 Morriss, Richard K., The Archaeology of Buildings 2004 Peters, J.E.C., Discovering Traditional Farm Buildings 1981 Rackham, Oliver, Woodlands 2006 Ryan, Carole, Farm and Rural Building Conversions 2013
Journals that cover the subject are the Historic Farm Buildings Group Review; Vernacular Architecture: The Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Group; publications from county history groups, etc. County Record Offices and, of course, the Museum of English Rural Life in Reading have a tremendous amount of original material relating to farms.

This article first appeared in the September 2015 issue of Cutting Edge. As part of the IOC membership, IOC members receive quarterly editions of Cutting Edge magazine and access to all back issues online.

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