Many meadows in Swaledale have a stone barn. Each meadow produced hay, which was then stored in the barns. Every barn has an area for hay called a hay mew and a separate area for wintering cows in stalls. During the winter the farmer would walk to his barns twice a day to feed his cows and to let them out to drink. In the spring the manure would have been spread, by hand, on the land to fertilize the meadows for the hay crop in summer. Today very few of these barns are used in that way. Some are still used to store hay but are rarely used to house stock, which today is housed in modern buildings around the farmstead.
Many people ask why barns have stones sticking out at intervals, in rows; most of the houses here were built well over a hundred years ago, from local stone. There are two “skins”, an inner and an outer, with rubble filling the gap between. To ensure the skins did not fall away from each other, long “throughs” were inserted from outside to inside. In dwellings, the throughs were cut off, to make the house look tidier, but with barns there was no need to waste time doing that, which is why Swaledale barns are so distinctive.
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Great piece and, as always, great images Ian, of one of my favourite parts of Yorkshire.