Hi,
Scottish cruck frames probably were raised in much the same way as southern rude crucks but using mainly jointed / elbowed crucks. Instead of timber walls, stone walls were then built around the cruck blades. In later years, and especially following the Highland clearances (post 1745) people were forced off the land and shipped to America, with their houses and farmsteadings being burnt to the ground to prevent their return. This has resulted in the only remaining widespread evidence of this cruck construction tradition being the standing stone walls where slots can still be seen today on the inside face of the stone walls in the locations where once the cruck blades were effectively embedded in the walls. I have taken some photographs of just such a house being dismantled at Killin, Argyll but it will take some time to retrieve these from the photo archive.
There is an illustraton of a cruck framed barn at Corrimony near Inverness, Scotland in The Cruck Catalogue (Alcock et al, 1981) by Hay (1975) and also a study of Scottish (G P Stell, 1981) and Irish (A Gailey, 1964 & D McCourt, 1961 & 1972) cruck framed buildings.
G P Stell makes an intertesting statement "cruck framing was the standard method of constructing farm buildings in lowland Scotland and that this practice was widespread from the Solway Firth [border with England] to Aberdeen [NE Scotland]"
This last statement by Stell is bold but does tend to fit the visual pattern of early vernacular building construction in Scotland. Unfortunately, without close internal inspection, it would be impossible to confirm or deny this postulation and therefore the claims by the Babcocks about the Nipmoose barn would prove equally difficult to justify.
On balance, like G P Stell, I am prepared to take a bold punt and say that the Nipmoose barn construction method is not a typical Scottish vernacular construction method but might be more a localised invention devised and implemented in response to new found building material supplies and different climatic and crop processing circumstances.
Sounds like a good timber building conservation dissertation topic for a student with good cross pond connections to investigate.
Regards
Ken Hume
