HI all good thread and many good view points!!
Just food for thought:
On an open sided 10 bay drive shed such as would have been customary for church drive sheds from the earliest dates, how could you have used long braces on the open sides?
At the most only short braces could have been used, and that would have been from above the tie beams above the carriage openings to the upper plates. These outbuildings survived until they were made obsolete by the automobile. the ones used on all the farms are still around.
I also have seen long braces, but only in New World Dutch barns, and were inserted as sway braces. this framing style originated around the Pennsyvania area. The new England examples though, I always put it down to frames built originally by shipwrights, who being extremely precise in their work went that extra mile and used long braces wherever they could needed or not.
One thing I know for sure is that long bracing never really caught on at least in our neck of the woods, something like the Dutch Barns with the large anchor beams, the style quickly vanished the builders adapting to the 3 bay English barns style which predominantly used short braces of varying lengths and either square or rectangular in cross section.
NH
