Exploring Connecticut Barns

 

Spiffy barn on Ferry Lane in Glastonbury

I like a man who likes to see a fine barn as well as a good tragedy.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

In the Connecticut landscape, there are so many barns that are reminders of the agricultural age that once, and still is a prominent component of the landscape. Sometimes all that remains of many farm properties is the original farmhouse and a barn or two. The barns that remain, whether still in use or not, are interesting to me mostly because of the quality of both the materials and the workmanship that went into building them. Also, in a nostalgic way, I grew up in dairy country in New York State and I used to play in and around barns where the smells of the grain and the animals were a major feature of daily life.

Connected brown barns in South Windsor

A good site for investigating any barns is https://connecticutbarns.org/. You can click on the map to find barns in a particular town, and there is a picture and pertinent information as to past and present uses and historical interest, if any. This site is a valuable resource in identifying and learning about barns you may have an interest in.

One of the more familiar barns in Connecticut is the one at the Nathan Hale Homestead in Coventry. A post and beam framed structure built in the 1760s, it is located on South Street. This barn is on the National Register of Historic Places in Connecticut. It is built in the English/ New England hybrid style which normally had a gable roof and vertical sheathing.

Nathan Hale Homestead Barn

The Morse Farm barn in Scotland is listed on the National Register, the State Historic Resource Inventory and the State Register. This carriage house style barn has one and one half stories and features a gambrel roof design. A gambrel roof has two distinctive slopes on both sides, with the upper slope pitched at a shallow angle and the lower slope at a steeper angle. This allowed for more head room when working on the upper floor.  This barn had a combined use as a stable and   carriage storage.

Morse Farm carriage house barn with gambrel roof

Jarmoc  Farms in Enfield, a tobacco farm, has a typical carriage house style barn, with one large front entrance with double sliding doors. As its names suggests, this style of barn was used to house carriages and tack, and horses were stabled nearby. These typically were open fronted, single story buildings, having the roof supported by regularly spaced pillars. The exterior or carriage house barns often echoed the style of the farmhouse.

Barn with open door- Jarmoc Farms Enfield

On Newberry Road in South Windsor, there is a good example of a barn of the English bank structure. New England barns are usually a type of bank barn, built into the side of a hill giving ground level access to one side, but a ramp or rarely a bridge were used to access the doors. Roof and eave overhangs were typically one foot to protect walls from rain water. Ventilators and cupolas were added to some barns in the 19th century to reduce moisture build-up. Some barns had stairs, but most featured ladder access to the second floor.

New England bank style barns in South Windsor

 A picturesque red barn with white trim and a cupola located on Main Street, South Windsor, is an example of an English/New England hybrid style barn. The English barn is a simple building with a rectangular plan, a pitched roof, and a door or doors located on one or both of the long sides of the building. The New England style barn, built after 1830, could stand alone or be connected to other farm buildings and had an often off-centered end wall door for wagons to enter.

English/New England hybrid style barn with cupola in South Windsor

On Valley Falls Road in Vernon, the historic red barn, built between 1875 and 1920 features a gambrel bank style, a cupola and a timber frame structure. A milking stable was in the basement, featuring the typical cement floor and manure gutters and whitewashed walls.  Listed on the Local Historic District and the State Register, this historic barn features an annual Artist’s Day at the Farm event, with artists painting the barn and then auctioning the paintings later that same day.

Historic red barn on Valley Falls Road, Vernon

Across the street from the red barn is the Valley Falls Farm, featuring an historic English style barn that is also on the State Register. It features vertical sheathing and is painted white with green trim and has a huge bell on its precincts. Christian Sharps, inventor of the Sharps rifle, bought this farm in 1871. A Hungarian aristocrat, Hans Munchow built the horse stables and outbuildings after purchasing the property in 1910.

Valley Falls Farm barn and outbuildings

The Farwell Barn (Jacobson barn) located on Horsebarn Hill Road in Storrs, is a 19^th century post and beam framed clapboard barn acquired by the Connecticut Agricultural College, which later became the  University of Connecticut . This New England bank style barn is listed on the National Register, number 00001649.

Jacobson barn on Horsebarn Hill, Storrs

Jacobson barn on a foggy winter morning

Gilbert Road in Stafford features an English Bank style of barn. Not too far away, on 425 Old Springfield Road in Stafford there is the Greystone Farm English style barn that features exterior siding of gray fieldstone, flushboard and vertical siding on other sections. The roof is a gable type.

English bank style barn with matching birdhouse on Gilbert Road, Stafford

Greystone Farm barn with fieldstone

The Sheridan Farmstead (c. 1760) on Hebron Road in Bolton is listed on the State Register of Historic Places and features a gentleman’s barn built in 1900. A gentleman’s barn had a dual purpose as a weekend retreat and a working farm. The white extended English bank barn features a stairway to the upper level, hay chutes, a brick chimney, rolling doors, an earthen ramp and horse stalls on the ground level.

Sheridan Homestead gentleman’s barn Bolton, Ct.

Unlike most in our region, the tobacco barns were created with a single crop-single purpose in mind- gently drying and curing tobacco leaves. built in the rich Connecticut River valley, the barns pictured below are still used today.

Tobacco barn in Glastonbury

Tobacco barn in South Windsor

If a little interest has been sparked in our agricultural history and the barns that shaped its success, I hope you come discover some interesting barns in your travels.  It is hard to think that, in some way, there is any town in our little state that is not part of our rich farming history. Happy hunting!

Pamm Cooper                                                      all photos copyrighted 2017 by Pamm Cooper 

Barn with a red door in South Windsor