Timber Framers Guild Forums General Barns and Traditional Timberframing Biggest high-drive I've ever seen.

Or have ever heard of, for that matter. Saw this one yesterday while out for a drive.

I think it would almost have to be built like a bridge. I wonder if they would let you get inside pics.
What would the benefit be to enter the barn above the threshing floor?
This is very curious indeed.

Cool. Where is it?

Jim

It's in Tyringham Mass. About 15 minutes from me. I guess they wanted to get the wagon up high to unload into the mows on either side of the middle bay. I'm guessing there is a floor above the threshing floor, but couldn't tell from the road. I can see one post in the middle, so it isn't a free span which would have been really cool. I think this might be part of a Shaker settlement. I'll have to do some more research.

That is a nice one, and it is called a Barn Bridge is it not ? It leads to the high drive.

I'm curious as to what suggests to you a Shaker connection. Have you seen the barn foundation at Canterbury Shaker Village ? It was a massive three story High Drive Barn, the granite ramp is itself massive, and built just like a bridge abutment, a backwall and wingwalls, but on a huge scale. Perhaps a hundred feet long and I know it is thirty feet high, and that sixty feet from the barn.

I've seen photos of it before it was lost to fire in '74, but never one shot from an angle in which you can see it's bridge.

There is a Shaker settlement within a couple of hundred yards, I am guessing this building is part of that, but not sure. I've always seen barns with a bridge called high drives in the books. I guess if you have a bridge, you also have a high drive.

High and dry drives.

Tim

Good info on High Drives & Barn Bridges in this fine Book -

http://books.google.com/books?id=2W1Lq_n...arn&f=false

I have that book. The Cascade barn was about 6 miles from me.

Here's one near me, circa 1850, measures 42 X 70.

How big is each section of that one, Dave? Perhaps they were built at different times.