The Sanborn Barn

 

The barn was first erected in the 1850s. Currently, it measures 86 by 40 feet, though it was two bays smaller when first built. Originally, the barn housed animals on the second floor with cows to the west and sheep to the east. Scuttles – openings in the floor – went from where the animals were tied up down to the manure pit in the cellar below. At some point in the barn’s history, bays were added to each end of the building. The original roof system was a king post system connecting the rafter peaks to the girts. A cupola was added at some point which interfered with this system and so the roof was replaced by a modified queen post truss similar to the one in the horse barn (now woodworking studio). It probably was intended to support the second floor
without requiring posts in the humid, manurefilled cellar. However, it didn’t work.

Today, posts in the cellar support the second floor. In the mid-twentieth century a milking parlor was built in the cellar complete with stanchions, a milk room, and gutter cleaners. Between 2014 and 2016, the deterioration of the barn was addressed by master timber framer Steve Fifield and his crew. They retained as much of the original fabric as possible, brought the building back into plumb and replaced most of the external posts and joints between the girts and rafters in the east wall which had been cobbed together as they had failed with telephone poles. The barn has been repurposed to serve the needs the expanding educational programs at Sanborn Mills Farm. The cellar has become a wellequipped kitchen and dining room, the tie up floor a place for convenings, workshops, and special events, and the hay mow floor an exhibit space for collections of traditional tools and equipment