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Archaeology - Talks - Walks - Cultural heritage Vernacular buildings - Historic documents
October - Half way there.
By the end of October, survey visits to 80 field sites were complete and a further sixteen planned. Photographs of the converted agricultural buildings in the villages have been taken and Recording Team Five agreed to photograph the sites visible from the public footpaths between Hag Dyke and Hoobank, which will enable us to plan what further work is needed in this area.
We are currently over half way with the collection of the survey information but analysis, and compilation of the report, has yet to start.
During the month, Pat and Phil visited the NYCC Archives and acquired copies of the Starbotton Tithe map and the Enclosure Award maps for both Starbotton and Kettlewell. Apart from highlighting the number of field barns, which no longer exist, these old maps often show that the footprint of a building has altered over the intervening years.
Two examples of this change over time are shown below, Barn A, although now a ruin, still has every corner clearly visible in the rubble and was almost square in the final phase. We find that the time talking to farmers is time well spent, as they provide information about specific buildings and about their use in general. In the case of Barn A, a
conversation with the farmer from the adjacent land holding, whilst recalling when this now decayed building was in use, proved very helpful.
The conversation confirmed some of our suppositions about the plan of the building, but also that, when the barn was last in use, the shippon had been at the south side of the cart entrance, information that we could not have gleaned from the existing ruin.
Barn A - Now a sprawl of scattered stone, rotting timber and well
established trees © P Carroll
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The Starbotton Tithe map clearly shows Barn B with an out-shut or lean-to building against the northern end, of which there is now little or no evidence. The National Trust building report suggests that ‘this may have been an insubstantial addition, which has left no trace’
Barn B - The tithe map shows the lean-to where the doors are today © P Carroll
So our three dimensional jigsaw puzzles continue, with each survey slowly unpicking parts of the hidden history of these interesting, complex and multi-phase buildings.
Pat and Phil Carroll
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Read the November/December 2011 report
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