A byre-dwelling ("byre"+ "dwelling") is a farmhouse in which the living quarters are combined with the livestock and/or grain barn under the same roof. In the latter case, the building is also called a housebarn in American English.
This kind of construction is found in archaeological sites in northwestern Europe from the Bronze Age. It was also used in more modern times by Mennonites in Flanders and the Netherlands. [1]
The Bregenzerwälderhaus from the Bregenz Forest in Vorarlberg is an example for a byre-dwelling. The stable and the usually two-storey house are under one roof. [2]
The generic German term is Wohnstallhaus from Wohnung ("dwelling"), Stall ("byre", "sty)" and Haus ("house").
From the Iron Age onwards the longhouse, developed from the byre-dwellings of the Bronze Age with its domestic area and adjacent cattle bays, was found across the North German Plain. As a result of the keeping of ever larger herds of cattle, these buildings became longer. Examples of such Iron Age longhouses were first excavated in large numbers on the warft of Feddersen Wierde near the German North Sea coastal town of Cuxhaven. Since then, this type of house has been found from Holland to South Jutland (for its construction see the post in ground article).
The variation of the hall house known as the Low Saxon house (Niedersachsenhaus) was developed from the longhouse. This type of dwelling is distributed across the North German Plain from the Netherlands to the Bay of Gdansk (Danzig) and bounded in the south by the Central Uplands.
To the south of this region is found the Middle German house (Ernhaus) which also occurs as a byre-dwelling and was found in many sub-variants from the Rhine to the far side of the River Vistula. Early on this type was developed into variants that separated the various functions. For example, the functions of cattle shed and barn were later transferred to separate buildings or had never been part of the domestic building at all.
Two-storey byre-dwellings with stone walled ground floors occurred in the northeast of Baden-Württemberg in the 15th century. They were described as Pastor Mayer houses (Pfarrer-Mayer-Häuser). [3]
The Black Forest house is probably a more recent development of a byre-dwelling, whereby the functions (especially on hillsides) were also divided over two floors. Likewise the Haubarg in North Frisia is a recent development of the Early Modern Period from the East Frisian Gulfhaus .
The Engadine house which emerged in the 15th/16th centuries, especially in the Engadine, is a typical byre-dwelling. It is a solid, stone building, usually with a wooden core, which comprises domestic and working areas, one behind the other, under a single, broad saddle roof. The domestic and working areas cover three storeys, with a gate on the lower and ground floors. On the lower floor is the byre (Stallhof or Cuort) with access to the cattle bays and cellars. At the front of the ground floor storey is the vestibule (Sulèr, pietan) leading to the living quarters: the parlour (Stube), kitchen (Küche), larder (Vorratskammer) and, at the back, the barn (Scheune) for the hay. A haycart (Heukarren, tragliun) could only be taken through the upper gate or the vestibule into the barn. On the upper storey (Palatschin) are the bedrooms. The sitting room has the only stove, which heated the living quarters from the kitchen outwards. While the division of the rooms and the position of the windows and oriels (with their view of the well) were based mainly on practical considerations, the facades of Engadine houses were often richly decorated with murals and sgraffiti.
For centuries, Engadine houses dominated the scene in the Engadine villages of Ardez, Guarda, Zuoz, La Punt etc., where they were grouped around a common well as a village quarter that formed a Romanesque cooperative farming organisation.
In England too, there was a very similar type of dwelling, of which remains survive in the southwest, for example in the longhouse variants of Dartmoor, in Cornwall or in Wales. In Ireland there are similar byre-dwellings, albeit the fireplace here appears to have been placed against a gable wall. [4] In northwestern England this type of dwelling is also described in the Cumbrian countryside. [5]
Compared are the Yemeni towerhouses, in which the ground floor was reserved for animals, with dwellings on higher floors. [6]
A barn is an agricultural building usually on farms and used for various purposes. In North America, a barn refers to structures that house livestock, including cattle and horses, as well as equipment and fodder, and often grain. As a result, the term barn is often qualified e.g. tobacco barn, dairy barn, cow house, sheep barn, potato barn. In the British Isles, the term barn is restricted mainly to storage structures for unthreshed cereals and fodder, the terms byre or shippon being applied to cow shelters, whereas horses are kept in buildings known as stables. In mainland Europe, however, barns were often part of integrated structures known as byre-dwellings. In addition, barns may be used for equipment storage, as a covered workplace, and for activities such as threshing.
A longhouse or long house is a type of long, proportionately narrow, single-room building for communal dwelling. It has been built in various parts of the world including Asia, Europe, and North America.
The Dartmoor longhouse is a type of traditional stone-built home, typically found on the high ground of Dartmoor, in Devon, England and belonging to a wider tradition of combining human residences with those of livestock under a single roof specific to western Britain; Wales, Cornwall and Devon, where they are more usually referred to simply as longhouses and in general housebarns.
A dugout or dug-out, also known as a pit-house or earth lodge, is a shelter for humans or domesticated animals and livestock based on a hole or depression dug into the ground. Dugouts can be fully recessed into the earth, with a flat roof covered by ground, or dug into a hillside. They can also be semi-recessed, with a constructed wood or sod roof standing out. These structures are one of the most ancient types of human housing known to archaeologists, and the same methods have evolved into modern "earth shelter" technology.
A farmhouse is a building that serves as the primary quarters in a rural or agricultural setting. Historically, farmhouses were often combined with space for animals called a housebarn. Other farmhouses may be connected to one or more barns, built to form a courtyard, or with each farm building separate from each other.
Scottish Vernacular architecture is a form of vernacular architecture that uses local materials.
The Palais Strousberg was a large city mansion built in Berlin, Germany for the railway magnate Bethel Henry Strousberg. It was designed by the architect August Orth and built between 1867–68 at No.70 Wilhelmstraße. The grandiose splendour of its accommodation and novel integration of the latest building technologies into the fabric of the building, ensured that Berliners would still find the Palais impressive decades after its construction, becoming the model of refined luxury in Berlin architecture.
A bank barn or banked barn is a style of barn noted for its accessibility, at ground level, on two separate levels. Often built into the side of a hill or bank, the upper and the lower floors could be accessed from ground level, one area at the top of the hill and the other at the bottom. The second level of a bank barn could also be accessed from a ramp if a hill was unavailable.
The Low German house or Fachhallenhaus is a type of timber-framed farmhouse found in northern Germany and the easternmost Netherlands, which combines living quarters, byre and barn under one roof. It is built as a large hall with bays on the sides for livestock and storage and with the living accommodation at one end.
The Middle German house is a style of traditional German farmhouse which is predominantly found in Central Germany.
A Gulf house, also called a Gulf farmhouse (Gulfhof) or East Frisian house (Ostfriesenhaus), is a type of byre-dwelling that emerged in the 16th and 17th centuries in North Germany. It is timber-framed and built using post-and-beam construction. Initially Gulf houses appeared in the marshes, but later spread to the Frisian geest. They were distributed across the North Sea coastal regions from West Flanders through the Netherlands, East Frisia and Oldenburg as far as Schleswig-Holstein. This spread was interrupted by the Elbe-Weser Triangle which developed a type of Low German house instead, better known as the Low Saxon house.
A housebarn is a building that is a combination of a house and a barn under the same roof. Most types of housebarn also have room for livestock quarters. If the living quarters are only combined with a byre, whereas the cereals are stored outside the main building, the house is called a byre-dwelling.
The Geestharden house, also called the Cimbrian house, Schleswig house, Slesvig house or Southern Jutland house due to its geographical spread in Jutland, is one of three basic forms on which the many farmhouse types in the north German state of Schleswig-Holstein are based. The other two basic designs are the Gulf house and the Low German hall house. By far the best known variant of the Geestharden house is the Uthland-Frisian house, which is also referred to as the Frisian house (Friesenhaus).
Romanesque architecture is an architectural style of medieval Europe characterised by semi-circular arches. The term "Romanesque" is usually used for the period from the 10th to the 12th century with "Pre-Romanesque" and "First Romanesque" being applied to earlier buildings with Romanesque characteristics. Romanesque architecture can be found across the continent, diversified by regional materials and characteristics, but with an overall consistency that makes it the first pan-European architectural style since Imperial Roman Architecture. The Romanesque style in England is traditionally referred to as Norman architecture.
The Black Forest house is a byre-dwelling that is found mainly in the central and southern parts of the Black Forest in southwestern Germany. It is characterised externally by a long hipped or half-hipped roof that descends to the height of the ground floor. This type of dwelling is suited to the conditions of the Black Forest: hillside locations, broad tracks, high levels of snowfall and heavy wind loading. Individual farms, such as the Hierahof near Kappel, which are still worked today, are over 400 years old. The Black Forest house is described by Dickinson as very characteristic of the Swabian farmstead type.
The Lorraine house or Lorraine farmhouse is a vernacular, agricultural house type found in Lorraine in France and the western part of the Saarland in Germany. It is a byre-dwelling, with the living and working quarters of a farming business combined under one roof. Lorraine houses developed after the devastating wars of the 17th century and took the place of individual scattered farmsteads.
The Montafonerhaus is a house type in the Montafon valley in Vorarlberg (Austria).
The Bregenzerwälderhaus, Bregenzerwaldhaus or Wälderhaus is a house type from the Bregenz Forest region in Vorarlberg (Austria).
An outbuilding, sometimes called an accessory building or a dependency, is a building that is part of a residential or agricultural complex but detached from the main sleeping and eating areas. Outbuildings are generally used for some practical purpose, rather than decoration or purely for leisure, although luxury greenhouses such as orangeries or ferneries may also be considered outbuildings. This article is limited to buildings that would typically serve one property, separate from community-scale structures such as gristmills, water towers, fire towers, or parish granaries. Outbuildings are typically detached from the main structure, so places like wine cellars, root cellars and cheese caves may or may not be termed outbuildings depending on their placement. A buttery, on the other hand, is never an outbuilding because by definition is it is integrated into the main structure.
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