Barn at Shafters Farm

Barn, probably C17, with some later repairs and introduced timber.

MATERIALS: a predominantly oak timber frame, clad in corrugated sheeting but formerly it would have been weather-boarded with a thatched roof.

PLAN: a three-bay aisled barn, aligned roughly north-south, with a central entrance porch to the west and a secondary entrance opposite it to the east.

EXTERIOR: the principal elements of the timber frame are in place; these include jowled corner posts and aisle posts, wall plates, braces and much of the roof structure. The outer cill beam has been replaced and the building sits on a concrete plinth. It has a deep, steeply sloping hipped roof that extends over the aisles, and a half-hipped roofed porch to the west.

INTERIOR: throughout the barn jowled posts are steeply cut away above the braces rather than gently rounded off as is the norm. The northern aisle posts rest on sole plates that extend from the perimeter of the barn. Elsewhere aisle posts rest on concrete pads or bases. Within the northern half of the barn the timber frame is braced with upward curving braces at the angles; in the southern half only the end wall is braced. Aisle posts are braced to the aisle plates and tie beams, in some cases with ogival or wany braces, and are tied to the wall plate. Trusses either side of the entrance bay are braced to the tie beam with upward curving braces. To allow access, the central bays are not braced; on both the east and west sides the wall plate over the central bay has a pegged scarf joint. Some of the studs remain in place in the north wall, elsewhere the studs and mid-rails have been replaced and are nailed in. The frame is numbered but by component joints rather than sequentially from north to south or vice versa. The north-west section beneath the aisles is subdivided into storage compartments and beneath the porch is clad with wide horizontally laid planks.

The barn has a queen post roof with a single row of purlins and paired rafters without a ridge piece. It has been repaired, introducing some new timber.