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. [1] [2]
Types of farmhouses in Europe include the following:
A Bresse house (French : Ferme bressane) is a type of farmhouse found in the Bresse region and characterized by its long length, brick walls and wooden roof. [3] [4] A Mas is a traditional farmhouse unique to Provence and Southern France. [5] [6]
Historically there were three main types of German farmhouses, many of which survive today. The Low German house or Niedersachsenhaus (Lower Saxony house) is found mainly on the North German Plain, but also in large parts of the Netherlands. It is a large structure with a sweeping roof supported by two to four rows of internal posts. The large barn door at the gable end opens into a spacious hall, or Deele, with cattle stalls and barns on either side and living accommodation at the end. The Middle German house may also be a single unit, but access is from the side, and the roof is supported by the outside walls. Later this type of mitteldeutsches Haus was expanded to two or more buildings around a rectangular farmyard, often with a second story. The South German house is found in southern Germany and has two main variants, the Swabian or Black Forest house and the Bavarian farmstead. [7]
A Cascina a corte is a courtyard building whose arrangement is based on the Roman villa found in the Po Valley of northern Italy.[ citation needed ] A house called Casa colonica in Italy is a type of farmhouse where the residents work the land but do not own the farm. [8]
Ta' Tabibu farmhouse and Ta' Xindi Farmhouse are two typical Maltese farmhouses built with the use of Limestone material. In Maltese a farmhouse is called Razzett. [9] [10] Other examples of Maltese farmhouses are the Ta' Cisju Farmhouse and The Devil's Farmhouse.
Types of farmhouses in North America include the following:
Canadian farmhouses were influenced by European settlers. In Quebec, the style varied from Gothic to Swiss, with the kitchen being the most important room in the house. [11] In Ontario, the farmhouses of the late 19th century were of Victorian influence. Earlier ones used clapboard and later variations had brick. Many had front porches. In the west, dwellings varied from single-story wooden homesteads to straw huts. Wooden houses were built later as railroads brought wood from the Rockies (Alberta, British Columbia). By the early 1900s houses could be purchased as kits from several Canadian and American companies. [12] [13]
American farmhouses had a straightforward construction designed to function amidst a working farm in a rural setting. [2] They had a simple rectangular floor plan, usually built with local materials, and included a dominant centrally-located fireplace for cooking and heating. [2]
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.
Vernacular architecture is building done outside any academic tradition, and without professional guidance. It is not a particular architectural movement or style, but rather a broad category, encompassing a wide range and variety of building types, with differing methods of construction, from around the world, both historical and extant and classical and modern. Vernacular architecture constitutes 95% of the world's built environment, as estimated in 1995 by Amos Rapoport, as measured against the small percentage of new buildings every year designed by architects and built by engineers.
Westphalia is a small unincorporated community in Falls County, Texas, United States, located 35 mi (56 km) south of Waco on State Highway 320. Westphalia has a strong German and Catholic background. The Church of the Visitation was, until recently, the largest wooden church west of the Mississippi River. Westphalia is mainly noted for its historic church and convents, but also for its meat market and for its annual church picnic, which is one of the largest in the area. Westphalia is also known for the Westphalia Waltz.
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.
Bell Farm is a heritage farm built in 1882 by William Robert Bell on ten miles (16 km) square or 60,000 acres (24,000 ha) at Indian Head in Saskatchewan. The Bell Farm Barn is amongst the ten top most endangered sites by the Heritage Canada Foundation. The round structure consisted of a silo which could be used also as a lookout tower. The silo had a capacity of 4,000 bushels of oats and 100 tons of hay. The surrounding area could house 36 horse and an office. Having the silo centrally located greatly reduced labour involved in livestock feeding and resulted in a stronger facility than the rectangular structures.
The Manning–Kamna Farm is a private farm adjacent to Hillsboro in Washington County, Oregon, United States. Settled in the 1850s, ten buildings built between 1883 and 1930 still stand, including the cross-wing western farmhouse. These ten structures comprise the buildings added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2007 as an example of a farm in the region from the turn of the 20th century. Until the 1950s the farm was used to grow seeds, including rye grass and vetch. Listed buildings on the property include a barn, smokehouse, pumphouse, woodshed, and privy.
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 McClelland Homestead is a historic farm in western Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, United States. Located along McClelland Road northeast of Bessemer, the farm complex includes buildings constructed in the middle of the 19th century. It has been designated a historic site because of its well-preserved architecture.
A Bresse house is a timber-framed house of post-and-beam construction, that is infilled with adobe bricks and is typical of the Bresse region of eastern France. A large hip roof protects the delicate masonry from rain and snow. The house is almost always oriented in a north–south direction, the roof on the north side often being lower. This configuration offers the optimum protection from the bise, a cold northerly wind typical of the region, which is deflected over the house by the low, sweeping roof on the northern gable end. The living rooms are on the south side, the main façade facing the morning sun. Usually each room has one or two outside doors, so that no space is sacrificed for passages.
The Fisk Barn is a historic barn on Gerry Road in Dublin, New Hampshire, United States. Built in the 1790s, it is a good local example of 18th-century farm architecture, made further notable by its conversion to an art studio in 1929, during Dublin's heyday as an artists' colony. The barn was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
American historic carpentry is the historic methods with which wooden buildings were built in what is now the United States since European settlement. A number of methods were used to form the wooden walls and the types of structural carpentry are often defined by the wall, floor, and roof construction such as log, timber framed, balloon framed, or stacked plank. Some types of historic houses are called plank houses but plank house has several meanings which are discussed below. Roofs were almost always framed with wood, sometimes with timber roof trusses. Stone and brick buildings also have some wood framing for floors, interior walls and roofs.
The John Elkins Farmstead is a historic farmstead at 155 Beach Plain Road in Danville, New Hampshire, United States. The property includes one of Danville's finest examples of a 19th-century connected farmstead, with buildings dating from the late 18th to late 19th centuries. The property encompassing the farm buildings was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.
Għargħar Battery, also known as Ta' Ittuila Battery and Ta' Xindi Battery, was an artillery battery in present-day San Ġwann, Malta, built by Maltese insurgents during the French blockade of 1798–1800. It was part of a chain of batteries, redoubts and entrenchments encircling the French positions in Marsamxett Harbour and the Grand Harbour.
Ta' Tabibu Farmhouse, originally known as the Dejma Tower, is a medieval building in St. Paul's Bay, Malta, which originally served as a militia watch post. It was later converted into a farmhouse and remains so until the present.
Ta' Xindi Farmhouse, also known as the Ta' Xindi Headquarters and Kappara Outpost, is an 18th-century farmhouse built during the Order of St. John in San Ġwann, Malta. It was originally designed to be a farmhouse but went through different adaptive reuse.
The Devil's Farmhouse, also known in Maltese as Ir-Razzett tax-Xitan, and officially as Ir-Razzett Tax-Xjaten, is an 18th-century farmhouse in Mellieħa, Malta. The farmhouse features two unconnected buildings. The original scope for the buildings were to function as stables and a horse-riding school (Cavalerizza).
The Lower Bavarian Open-Air Museums in Massing and Mauth has the objective of portraying the old ways of life and domestic and agricultural activities of the farming population of Lower Bavaria. It is owned by a communal special purpose association formed by the province of Lower Bavaria, the counties of Rottal-Inn and Freyung-Grafenau, and the municipalities of Massing and Mauth. The museums are under academic leadership.
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