A gin gang, wheelhouse, roundhouse or horse-engine house is a structure built to enclose a horse engine, usually circular but sometimes square or octagonal, attached to a threshing barn. Most were built in England in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The threshing barn held a small threshing machine which was connected to the gin gang via wooden gears, drive shafts and drive belt, and was powered by a horse which walked round and round inside the gin gang.
The gin (short for "engine") was the motive power driving a small threshing machine, and the horse did the gang, or going. [1] [2] The gin gang was always attached to the main threshing barn, where the gin was situated. It was almost always of one storey and it could be circular, polygonal or square. There was a hole for a drive−shaft or drive−belt, linking it with the threshing barn. [3] The gin was connected by cogs to a vertical spindle. The spindle was connected to a horizontal arrangement including a shaft attached to a horse, which turned the spindle and powered the machine by ganging or walking round and round the cogs and vertical spindle inside the walls of the gin gang. This arrangement was necessary in locations where there was no power for a water wheel, [2] hence in Wales and Ireland there is evidence of fewer gin gangs. [3]
Gin gangs were not usually thatched but were stone−flagged, tiled or pantiled, possibly because the gin damaged potential thatching straw. [3] Its structure tended to reflect locally available materials and hence local vernacular building style, because railways had not generally distributed brick and slate. Building materials include thatch in Sussex, pantiles in North Yorkshire, stone tiles and sandstone in Northumberland, granite pillars in Devon, wooden poles and flint in Norfolk, weatherboarding in Berkshire, brick in the East Riding of Yorkshire, white Magnesian Limestone in West Yorkshire, ironstone in Bedfordshire, and one instance of hexagonal ashlar pillars salvaged from Finchale Priory in Finchale, County Durham. Gin gangs were required to shelter the wooden gears, and not to protect the horse; hence in some places there is evidence of horse−walks or open−air horse−powered threshing machines instead. [3] The horse in the gin gang could also power machinery outdoors. [1]
Local names for covered gin gangs were covered gin−house, covered horse−walk, enginehouse, gin−case, gin−gan, gin−gang, gin−house, gin−race, horse−gear, horse mill /horse-mill, round−house, track−shed, four−wheelhouse, wheel−rig, wheel−shade and wheel−shed. These are not to be confused with the uncovered ones which were called gin−circle, ginnyring, horse−course, horse−gang, horse−path, horse−track and horse−walk. [3] In Scotland, Wales, and Warwickshire a gin gang was commonly called a horse engine house. [4] [5]
In 1976, 1,300 gin gangs were identified in Great Britain, and a few others in Ireland, Denmark, the Netherlands, and East Germany. Most gin gangs were built from around 1785 to 1851, peaking in 1800 to 1830. The most recent ones were built in the Isle of Wight and Cornwall from 1845 to 1868. In the 19th century there were 575 gin gangs in Northumberland and 227 in West Cumberland, but between the 1890s and the 1960s, hundreds of these were destroyed. In the 1970s, 276 survived in Northumberland and 200 in County Durham. In the same decade a survey found most remaining gin gangs were in the north−east and south−west of England, and it was suggested that this distribution could have been affected by the 1830 Swing Riots which destroyed most threshing machines in the south−east of England. As a result of this, in the 1970s Scotland still had 150 gin gangs, North East England had 800 and Cornwall had 100 remaining, but Wiltshire and Berkshire had 8 between them. Conversely, the Napoleonic Wars of 1803 to 1815 created a dearth of labour and a corresponding demand for gin gangs in Cornwall, Devon, and Dorset. The truly portable horse engine was invented around 1840; this obviated the necessity for building further gin gangs. [3]
No gin gang remains in operation commercially; the known examples outside museums are either derelict or have been renovated as barn conversions. These are Hutton AHR, [3] Keys farm buildings, [6] Scran horse engine house, [7] Scran Friars Croft Dunbr, [8] Carsegour gingang, [9] Westruther gingang, [10] RCAHM Skildinny, [11] horse engine house Perth and Kinross, [12] Sanday, [13] Muggleswick gin gang, [14] Holbeck farmhouse, [15] Colton farmhouse, [16] Ystum Colwyn farm Meifod, [17] [ dead link ] Beamish, [18] and Brewers House Museum. [19]
The surviving Low Walworth gin gang was built around the late 18th century. [6] In Northumberland examples exist in Harlow Hill, Hepple, Redesmouth and Stanton. In North Yorkshire two remain at Burn Bridge and Stapleton (see Commons link below). Scottish examples survive at St Quivox, South Ayrshire, [7] at Dunbar, East Lothian, [8] and at Carsegour, Kinross, [9] but the one at Westruther, Westertown in Berwickshire appears to have been destroyed since 1974. [10] The site of a former gin gang exists at Kildinny steading at Forteviot in Strathearn, Scotland. [11] However quite a few do survive in Perth and Kinross, [12] and there is one at Tresness Farm on Sanday in Orkney. [13] There is a listed gin gang at The Grange farmhouse at Muggleswick in County Durham, [14] and there used to be one in 1979 at Holbeck farmhouse in Barrow-in-Furness. [15] There is an example at Nettlecombe in Somerset. [16] There is an extant gin gang at Ystum Colwyn Farm, Meifod, in Wales. [17] The Beamish Museum in County Durham contains a restored gin gang. [3] [18] Another has been preserved at Weald and Downland Open Air Museum but is now labelled as a horse whim for raising water, as is the one at Brewers' House Museum in Antwerp. [19]
In Chopwell in Tyne and Wear a gin gang is part of a barn conversion. [20] Another one was renovated to become holiday cottages in the face of local controversy at Lanchester, County Durham. [21] [22] A barn conversion development, from a group of farm buildings known as a steading including an octagonal gin gang, was completed in 2010 at Longhorsley, Northumberland. [23] Another example survives as a barn conversion at Southstoke, Somerset. [24] Another recent renovation completed in January 2013 is The Wheelhouse in Barton North Yorkshire, now a holiday let.
Home Farm at the Beamish Museum, County Durham, contains an early 19th-century, semi-octagonal gin gang with sandstone or millstone grit walls and slate roof. The renovated internal roof structure is based on a traditional space frame truss with its primary plane in line with the tie beam (or joist), and with members fixed between king post and rafters to support the semi-octagonal plan of the roof. There is one main transverse oak tie beam on which the king post of the main truss is based. The king post is in tension to prevent sagging of the horizontal tie beam, so neither the king post nor the tie beam are resting on the mill below. The roof construction is not structurally dependent on the horse mill, or connected with it. [25]
The Beamish gin gang and its in−situ horse mill have not been used since the 1830s when portable engines superseded it. The gin gang survived because its original mill was removed and it was converted for other uses. The present mill was brought by the museum from Berwick Mills Low Farm in Northumberland. The museum has repaired and installed it as a museum exhibit, but it is not currently fit for purpose. The top of the mill's main vertical axle and the end of the main drive shaft are pivoted at the centre of their own separate tie beam, which is below and parallel with the main roof tie beam and set in the gin gang's side walls at either end. The mill's tie beam has to be stabilised with two massive oak beams which run, either side of the drive shaft, from tie beam to barn wall. A large and basic engine like this can create great stresses from the torque engendered. [25]
A threshing machine or a thresher is a piece of farm equipment that separates grain seed from the stalks and husks. It does so by beating the plant to make the seeds fall out. Before such machines were developed, threshing was done by hand with flails: such hand threshing was very laborious and time-consuming, taking about one-quarter of agricultural labour by the 18th century. Mechanization of this process removed a substantial amount of drudgery from farm labour. The first threshing machine was invented circa 1786 by the Scottish engineer Andrew Meikle, and the subsequent adoption of such machines was one of the earlier examples of the mechanization of agriculture. During the 19th century, threshers and mechanical reapers and reaper-binders gradually became widespread and made grain production much less laborious.
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.
Beamish Museum is the first regional open-air museum, in England, located at Beamish, near the town of Stanley, in County Durham, England. Beamish pioneered the concept of a living museum. By displaying duplicates or replaceable items, it was also an early example of the now commonplace practice of museums allowing visitors to touch objects.
Threshing, or thrashing, is the process of loosening the edible part of grain from the straw to which it is attached. It is the step in grain preparation after reaping. Threshing does not remove the bran from the grain.
Low Walworth is a hamlet in County Durham, England, 1.5 miles (2.4 km) to the north−west of the edge of Darlington. It consists of Low Walworth Hall, Low Walworth Farm and their respective cottages, flats and outbuildings. Several of these buildings are listed, and date from the 17th to the 19th century. Attached to one of the late-18th-century farm buildings is a gin gang, or building from which a horse powered a threshing machine by walking in a circle. The hall has accommodated at least one High Sheriff of Durham.
Walworth is a central small village with outlying farmsteads, which together constitute a scattered village in the borough of Darlington and the ceremonial county of County Durham, England. It is a civil parish which does not have a church. The population of this civil parish at the 2011 Census was 240. It is situated 2.5 miles (4.0 km) to the north-west of Darlington. The nucleus of the central village is the 16th-century Walworth Castle, which is now a hotel. On the north side of the village, around North Farm, are earthworks signifying a lost settlement, grouped around a barn which was once a chapel.
Hunwick is a semi-rural village in County Durham, England. There are actually two villages that are often referred to collectively as Hunwick, Hunwick and New Hunwick although it is generally accepted that the two villages are now as one. In the 2001 census Hunwick had a population of 952. This had grown to 1248 by the 2011 census.
Bingfield is a village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Whittington, in Northumberland, in England. It is situated to the north of Corbridge, off the A68 road and includes some properties situated on the A68. In 1951 the parish had a population of 76.
A horse mill is a mill, sometimes used in conjunction with a watermill or windmill, that uses a horse engine as the power source. Any milling process can be powered in this way, but the most frequent use of animal power in horse mills was for grinding grain and pumping water. Other animal engines for powering mills are powered by dogs, donkeys, oxen or camels. Treadwheels are engines powered by humans.
A steam tractor is a vehicle powered by a steam engine which is used for pulling.
A beam engine is a type of steam engine where a pivoted overhead beam is used to apply the force from a vertical piston to a vertical connecting rod. This configuration, with the engine directly driving a pump, was first used by Thomas Newcomen around 1705 to remove water from mines in Cornwall. The efficiency of the engines was improved by engineers including James Watt, who added a separate condenser; Jonathan Hornblower and Arthur Woolf, who compounded the cylinders; and William McNaught, who devised a method of compounding an existing engine. Beam engines were first used to pump water out of mines or into canals but could be used to pump water to supplement the flow for a waterwheel powering a mill.
A horse engine is a machine for using draft horses to power other machinery. It is a type of animal engine that was very common before internal combustion engines and electrification. A common design for the horse engine was a large treadmill on which one or more horses walked. The surface of the treadmill was made of wooden slats linked like a chain. Rotary motion from the treadmill was first passed to a planetary gear system, and then to a shaft or pulley that could be coupled to another machine. Such powers were called tread powers, railway powers, or endless-chain powers. Another common design was the horse wheel or sweep power, in which one or several horses walked in a circle, turning a shaft at the center. Mills driven by horse powers were called horse mills. Horse engines were often portable so that they could be attached to whichever implement they were needed for at the time. Others were built into horse-engine houses.
The Weald and Downland Living Museum is an open-air museum in Singleton, West Sussex. The museum is a registered charity.
A portable engine is an engine, either a steam engine or an internal combustion engine, that sits in one place while operating, but is portable and thus can be easily moved from one work site to another. Mounted on wheels or skids, it is either towed to the work site or moves there via self-propulsion.
The National Museum of Rural Life, previously known as the Museum of Scottish Country Life, is based at Wester Kittochside farm, lying between East Kilbride in South Lanarkshire and Carmunnock in Glasgow. It is run by National Museums Scotland.
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.
Prestongrange Museum is an industrial heritage museum at Prestongrange between Musselburgh and Prestonpans on the B1348 on the East Lothian coast, Scotland. Founded as the original site of the National Mining Museum, its operation reverted to East Lothian Council Museum Service in 1992.
The Cloppenburg Museum Village and Lower Saxon Open-Air Museum located in the Lower Saxon county town of Cloppenburg is the oldest museum village in Germany. The museum is a research and educational establishment specializing in cultural and rural history.
Kirkby Thore is a civil parish in the Eden District, Cumbria, England. It contains 14 listed buildings that are recorded in the National Heritage List for England. Of these, two are listed at Grade II*, the middle of the three grades, and the others are at Grade II, the lowest grade. The parish contains the village of Kirkby Thore and the surrounding countryside. Most of the listed buildings are in the village, and consist of houses and associated structures, farmhouses, farm buildings, a church, a house that originated as a medieval hall, a community hall, an animal pound and an associated structure, and a structure built from Roman material. The listed buildings outside the village are a farm and associated farm buildings.
Holland Farm is a historic farm complex located on the island of Papa Westray in Orkney, Scotland. The two-storey harled flagstone house with crow-stepped gables, was built by Thomas Traill as a laird's house in the early 1800s. The farm was expanded over two hundred years, and consists of a horse engine house, threshing barn, corn-drying kiln, smithy, stackyard and a lectern-style dovecote. The present complex is a working farm and includes the Bothy Museum.
