I am interested in any additional information about what some people call Scottish barns in America or "New World Scottish Barns".

In upstate New York their are some barns built with reverse-assembly framing which have been credited to Scottish immigrant(s) such as at this link: http://persistencefoundation.org/scottishbarn.htm

A blog about these barns is here (scroll down to "...Scotch Barns..."): http://www.heritagebarns.com/blog/

My questions are:

1. Is their a precedent for reverse assembly framing in Scotland?

2. How many barns in NY have been attributed to Scotsmen?

Thanks;
Jim

Hi Jim,

I think that you will struggle to make this link !

Most vernacular buildings in Scotland are of masonary construction with a small number of shutter formed clay walled agricultural buildings but I have yet to see a timber framed building in that country however that does not mean that they do not or did not exist at one time or another.

It is now emerging that a fairly extensive tradition of cruck building was employed for both house and barn but with stone rather than timber walls. It is also possible to see hammer beamed roofs and collar purlin roofs but these do not tend to be found in combination with timber walls and so it is in my mind doubtful if Scottish "clearance" carpenters would have been able to take the building tradition that you describe above with them from Scotland to the new world.

Please note that the people are called "Scots" and the alcoholic drink is called "Scotch" and so you should not describe barns as being Scotch barns unless these are being used to store whiskey.

Regards

Ken Hume

Ken,
Stone crucks? I assume you mean straight stone walls, with cruck timber roofs then on top of these. The first image that came to my mind was that of long, curved monolithic stones!

In your observation, Ken, what vernacular building style would this seem to resemble? I find this all very interesting, and it has got me curious.

I do not know about the very earliest settler in New Holland, but I believe most of the early Scots in this country were lowlanders, and a group that we call 'Scots-Irish' which are themselves descended from lowland Scots ad people from the northermost section of England who settled first in Ulster, then in America (they are not at all Irish. Though this may have some bearing on building methods.

Thanks for the comments so far.

Earlier I meant to post this link to this photo showing the post and tie beam missing the plate. http://persistencefoundation.org/scottishbarnduring.htm

Jim

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

Hi Jim,

I have just checked out the link that you kindly provided for us at :-

http://persistencefoundation.org/scottishbarnduring02.htm

and the centre picture at the top appears to show two normal English tying joint type jowl posts that have been rotated and joined together to form this joint. The resulting joint would be very difficult to assemble if a normal assembly wall plate were added.

I think therefore that this joint is an evolution based on English rather than standard Scottish building practice.

Case prooved ?

Regards

Ken Hume

It is hard to tell from the pictures provided, is the tenon on the end of the tie beam a free tenon? This could make the assembly easier.

Hi Tim,

I have just found that that this picture can be enlarged (click on picture) and yes indeed it does look like a free tenon. I also note that it has 2 sawn through peg holes on the end and so this could be a piece of old dry material used to make a repair to a damaged tenon. Some inside knowledge obtained directly from the Babcocks or the museum might help in this respect.

Jim, can you help here please ?

Regards

Ken Hume

Hi Ken;

Your information about Scottish buildings is much appreciated. I was aware most Scottish buildings were stone and cruck framing was used, but I was not aware it was so common.

This post/plate/tie intersection in this framing is a rare example of reverse assembly where the plate is on top of the tie beams rather than normal assembly where the tie beams are on top of the plate. It looks like the assembly requires the bents tipped up with the ties in place but then the ties would need to be elevated so the plate would slip onto the tie beam tenon. In the U.S. we also have what was dubbed the triple bypass joint where the assembly sequence also requires lowering assembled tie/plate connection down onto a flared post as seen here:

http://www.tfguild.org/joinery/part2.pdf
This is a link to a PDF file, look for figures 28-30.

I have no additional information about this framing.

No offense, but Richard Babcock's books often present information in the Eric Sloan style of not being documented and possibly presenting speculation or opinion as fact so I am careful to double check information from the Babcocks. I was wondering if the attribution of this framing type to Scots or Scots-Irish immigrants was well founded.

Jim

As per the free tenons...

The website text explains this, claiming that originally there were integral tenons, but at one point long ago the barn was disassembled and moved. They say that at this point, the carpenters were baffled by this construction, and settled on sawing out the original tenons and replacing them with free tenons later in order to take the frame apart.

My thought all along was that this barn does seem to be primarily English in character, but I was waiting for the Englishman to voice his opinion first, since he (Ken) would know far more about this than me. English framing is, admittedly, out of my realm of expertise.

It is entirely possible that this barn could have been built by an English carpenter or inspired by English designs, even if it was a Scotsman that first owned it. Thus, while being the property of a Scotsman, the barn may be English in its carpentry. To me, this seems to be the likely case.

It to me brings up memories of various references to things such as 'German barns' or 'Swiss Barns' that are built in decidedly non German or Swiss ways. The classic 'Swiss Barn' style is mostly of English techniques, with a few Germanic elements, notably the jettied floor and ramp entrance which come from Switzerland, however the prototypes in that country are framed much differently.

A good example is a barn not far from me in the Swiss Mennonite settlement at Berne Indiana. Here there is a huge barn called the "Swiss Bern". This barn was a second or third generation structure, built with distinctly American methods. It stands in contrast to the few older buildings built in the typical Swiss and German Fachwerk style.

My thought, then, is that this 'Scottish' barn may be of English design...

DLB