The Little Stoke Barn by Martin Davis

The last time I set eyes on the old barn at Little Stoke was about 1970: I forget the exact date.

As I stood there looking into its abandoned cavernous space and up at the decaying roof, many childhood memories filled my mind, of joyful times spent in the barn, then the very centre of many of the farm s activities. No records appear to show exactly when the barn was built, it was certainly there in 1725: a large and imposing building, in fact the largest, attached to any of the five closely grouped farms that was then the hamlet of Little Stoke.

It was built of the local stone: a warmish light grey in colour. Its walls thick, providing the strength to support the heavy beams and tiled roof. Curiously it was once part of the smallest of all the Little Stoke farms, a mere 23 acres. In 1725 it was leased to or occupied by Thomas Baylis and earlier to another Thomas – Thomas Jocham, around 1650.

Dairy farming was dominant in the area, so the reason that such a smallholding had a barn way in excess of its own needs indicates a way in which the farmers may have cooperated. One large barn would have provided all the space needed to store the grain and root crops grown on all five farms. Cattle on all the farms were thereby ensured food during the winter months.

A similar degree of cooperation could well have involved access by all the farmers to what appears to be the only cider mill in the hamlet, situated in its own building at Clay Bottom, just opposite the entrance to what is now Gallivan Close. It is now known to have been there as far back as 1690 and most probably earlier.

In 1856 plans were produced for the redevelopment and modernisation of the main farm at Little Stoke. Benjamin Willcox had succeeded his mother, Hannah as tenant, in 1851. Gradually, since 1725, the smaller farms in Little Stoke were taken over to become part of the main farm and by the early 1800s its area had reached 300 acres. As other land towards Savages Wood became available, it too became part of the farm. In 1856 Benjamin Willcox farmed a total 560 acres of land, by far Stoke Gifford s largest farm. Clearly redevelopment of the farm buildings was necessary. The large barn would have fitted well into the Willcox vision. It is shown clearly on the plan as existing and to be retained, surrounded by new accommodation for cattle. The house that Thomas Baylis once lived in may already have vanished, but where it once stood, new cowsheds were to be built, which, with the barn, formed two sides of a yard called Ox Barton. What had once been the front entrance to the barn became its back door.

Gaining access by the new main entrance on the opposite side of the barn, meant rolling back two large doors, each two storeys high, suspended from rails mounted on stout beams just below the tiled roof.

Once inside one entered the dusty world of the preparation of winter feed for the cattle. Above, the beams and rafters supporting the clay roof-tiles could be seen decorated with years of cobwebs. On the right there was a raised floor, the beams supporting it mounted in rectangular recesses, about ten feet up, in the thick barn walls. There was no staircase; access was by ladder only. In the space below, against the wall and near the main door, stood a machine that sliced rootcrops, such as turnips, swedes and mangels into chip-like strips. Diagonally opposite a chute from above delivered chaff – chopped straw or, more usually, hay – from the floor above.

The chaff cutter was a truly fearsome machine. Its metal frame stood squarely above a rectagular opening in the floor through which the chaff fell to be mixed into the cattle food below.

A horizontal slatted belt, some four feet long and about 12 inches wide moved the hay between vertical wooden boards towards a pair of rollers which grabbed and squashed the hay before delivering it to a pair of fast spinning sharp blades. These were, in effect, the spokes of a wheel about three feet in diameter. A dangerous piece of apparatus in the wrong or untrained hands! Much of the rest of the space on this floor was filled with hay or straw awaiting its guillotined fate.

Across the open void inside the barn entrance was another raised floor. Whereas the edge of the chaff-cutter floor was open without any rail or protection, that opposite was fully enclosed behind a wooden wall. A doorway, but no door, marked its centre. A short wooden beam jutted out just above the opening, from which dangled a block and tackle for hauling sacks of corn up to be swung into the room behind the opening, for this was the grain store.

Access was again only by ladder. Small windows, covered by the dust of ages, let a limited amount of light fall into the mounds of grain. The mice must have loved it all. A long-standing school friend, Alan, recently reminded me of the time that he was in charge of the block and tackle, with me acting as a sack of corn. As I was nearing the upper doorway he caught his finger in the chain, forcing him to release his grip.

I reached the ground a mere fraction of a second later little damaged but with bruised dignity. Alan had to suffer me following him around at length with a lot of finger wagging!

A chute in the corner of the grain store with flat sloping sides occupied the corner just to the right of the doorless opening. This fed corn down into the mill in the corner of the room below. This room had its own entrance immediately below the grain store opening. The grinding mill occupied a small partitioned space on the right.

The rest was an extremely dusty storage space, home to all sorts of devices which had fallen out of use. One of these was a substantial wooden winnowing machine, about six feet long, four wide and five tall. It was once used to separate the husks surrounding the corn seed from the seed itself, but had long since been abandonded. Once ears of corn had been first rubbed or beaten to loosen the husks. The result was then placed on open level trays in the winnower.

A large angled handle jutted out from the machine s side; turning this, via some speeding up gears, made a set of paddles rotate quickly, creating a strong draught, blowing the husks and other bits away from the corn seeds. That was all in the machine s prime. Now this forgotten relic was being be stirred into action – by me as a youngster. The gears, stiff with neglect, did, with vigorous application on my part, set the paddles to work with reluctant obedience, disturbing decades of settled flour dust into motion. The resulting white out – perhaps grey-out would be more accurate – obscured all from sight, while the groaning mechanics seemed to ask simply to be left alone.

On the opposite side of the barn, facing the entrance with its tall sliding doors was the original main entrance. The inside space in front of these old doors once opened out onto Ox Barton but was now stacked with root crops – mangels, turnips and swedes, all harvested each autumn on the farm.

Just to the left of the root stack was a small wooden door that gave access to the back of the mangers in a small cowshed, forming part of the barn with perhaps space for six or so cows. Delivering their feed was easy!

All the machinery in the barn required power to make it work. From the time of Benjamin Willcox until the start of the last century, power was almost always provided by horses. The barn machinery was driven by a horse working a circular form of tread-mill. This enabled the horse s motion to rotate a long axle that ran the full width of the barn, under the chaff-cutter floor. Wheels with flat rims were mounted strategically along the axle, with belts that ran from the flat rims to the machinery and back.

One extended right across the barn to turn the corn mill. Thus the horse s power was used to slice the mangels, chop the hay and grind the corn. As the technology developed the horse was replaced with a diesel engine housed in a lean-to corrugated iron shed that stood alongside the barn door. The engine had an enormous spoked flywheel as I recall, and starting it was quite a performance. Sometime in the early 1950s a three phase electric motor made life much simpler: motion at the touch of a button!

The horses had their own accommodation in stables at the southern end of the barn, which looked out on to the main farm entrance. The stables were sufficiently large to house six horses along with enough storage space for their harness. Each horse had its own manger along the back wall of the stable, with a hay-loft above, with openings in the floor above the mangers, enabling hay to be dropped down from above. The last working horse, a rich chestnut coloured mare carthorse was sold in 1956.

My final memory of the stables was of their conversion into pigsties: a row of three, each with an overhanging red heat lamp used to keep small piglets warm in the breeding season. Pigs are the most intelligent of farm animals, organising their space into a dry area for sleeping and another for bodily functions.

That visit to Little Stoke was my last until almost every trace of the farm, its house and, what was in centuries past, called its ‘backside – its yards and outbuildings, including the barn – had vanished to create space for new houses. Decisions by who then held the authority to manage planning showed a lack of imagination about the ways that the old farm buildings could have served new generations. The old barn in its own way, stood as a symbol of the old Little Stoke as a community. Its destruction denied those who now live there that same sense of identity.

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