Bank barn

A bank barn or banked barn is a style of barn noted for its accessibility, at ground level, on two separate levels. Often built into the side of a hill, or bank, both the upper and the lower floors area could be accessed from ground level, one area at the top of the hill and the other at the bottom. The second level of a bank barn also could be accessed from a ramp if a hill was not available.

Examples of bank barns can be found in the United Kingdom, in the US, in eastern Canada, in Norway, in the Dordogne in France and in Umbria, Italy, amongst other places.

Bank barns are especially common in the upland areas of Britain, in Northumberland and Cumbria in northern England and in Devon in the south-west.

The origins of bank barns in the UK are obscure. The bank barn had made its first appearance in Cumbria by the 1660s on the farms of wealthy farmers: here farmers bought drove cattle from Scotland and fattened them over winter before selling them in spring. The bank barn at Townend Farm, Troutbeck in former Cumberland was built for the prominent Browne family in 1666. The great majority of bank barns were built in Cumbria between 1750 and 1860, and the last were built just before the First World War.

Usually stone built, British bank barns are rectangular buildings. They usually have a central threshing area with hay or corn (cereal) storage bays on either side on the upper floor; and byres, stables, cartshed or other rooms below. The threshing barn on the upper floor was entered by double doors in the long wall approached from a raised bank: these banks could be artificially created. Opposite the main doors was a small winnowing door which opened high above the farmyard level. A common arrangement had an open-fronted single bay cartshed below the threshing floor, with stables on one side and a cow-house on the other. The entrances to these lower floor rooms were protected from above in many cases by a continuous canopy or pentise carried on timber or stone beams which are cantilevered from the main wall. Brick-built bank barns are less common.

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