The English barn, or three-bay barn, is a
barn
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.Allen G ...
style that was most popular in the northeast region of the US,
[Auer, Michael J]
The Preservation of Historic Barns
Preservation Briefs, National Park Service, first published October 1989. Retrieved 7 February 2007. but are the most widespread barn type in America. This barn type is, with the
New World Dutch barn, the oldest type and has been called the "...grandfather of the American barn." New barns in this style were constructed for over a century, from the 1770s through the 1900s.
[Historic Barn Types]
Taking Care of Your Old Barn, University of Vermont, Vermont Division for Historic Preservation. Retrieved 7 February 2007.
Design
The early pioneers brought with them a barn design inherited from the first colonists. An average English barn measured thirty feet by forty feet and had a large double wagon door on its lateral side and unpainted vertical boards covering the walls. English barns were normally without a
basement
A basement is any Storey, floor of a building that is not above the grade plane. Especially in residential buildings, it often is used as a utility space for a building, where such items as the Furnace (house heating), furnace, water heating, ...
and stood on level ground. The interior of the barns were characterized by a center driveway which acted as a threshing floor, similar to the breezeway of a
crib barn.
[Endersby, Elric, and Alexander Greenwood. ''Barn: the art of a working building''. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992. ] The double doors generally opened onto the center drive which divided the building into two separate areas, one for hay and grain storage and the other for livestock.
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See also
*New England barn
The New England Barn was the most common style of barn built in most of the 19th century in Rural area, rural New England and variants are found throughout the United States. This style barn superseded the English barn, ”three-bay barn” in seve ...
References
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External links
Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission site with information and a floor plan drawing
Barns in the United States