-
The Nuthanger byre and other farm buildings,
-
in October 1984.
The byre at Nuthanger farm, thatchless and in need of care and attention. |
A byre is not a barn. Byres are animal sheds, barns are for storing crops. Adams calls this a cow-byre,
which is self-explanatory. It's an ancient design, this one is a aisle-barn (sic), with two rows of upright wooden posts running down it's length,
supporting the roof half-way up. Inside, the posts form a central 'nave' with 'aisles' either side, terminology borrowed from church architecture.
It's hipped (the roof slopes) at one end, this end, only, suggesting it may have once been longer. It has
two doorways, both on the far side, which is consistent with it being for used to house animals.
|
Nuthanger Farm is a typical old mixed farm. Well, it was once. It had facilities for grain, cattle and pigs, all it lacks is a duck pond, which is rather tricky on top of a hill! Farms like this are
now all gone, they are simply, oh, what was
it that Kehaar said, all 'uneconomonic'.
After your WWII farms like this could not survive, and their land was all sold off
to make much bigger farms. |
|
|
Here, Nuthanger's byre's remains stand bare, all its thatch removed. If the idea had been simply to re-thatch it then there'd be no reason to
strip all the old thatch in one hit. If the idea had been to demolish the byre then you'd have pulled the whole lot down, thatch and all. No, the thatch
has been carefully removed, leaving the structure fully intact. So possibly, the idea was to restore and rebuild the byre. I don't know if that was what
actually happened - in the twenty years and more since I took this photograph I have not returned to Nuthanger farm. Other photographs suggest that this remaining part may have been covered in corrugated iron. However I found out when looking carefully
at my 1982 photographs was that this is just half the byre as was. The byre was indeed longer, and only two years before. What we have here is the remaining part, less than half the original building.
|
The other outbuildings at Nuthanger farm. |
The film sets the hutch in the byre, the remains of which are just off to the left of this photograph. We are looking
at the gap opened up by pulling down half the byre, which extended right to the building on the right. The book sets the hutch in a 'low-roofed shed'
somewhere here. Adams is not specific, though it's certainly not any of the buildings seen
here. Nearest to the house is the granary. We know its a granary because it's small and stands on staddle stones - those stone mushroom thingies. The reason
for them is that they prevent rats and the like from getting to the stored grain. Nearer to us is possibly another byre or, more likely, a barn for the storage
of winter animal feed. It's long since been re-roofed with corrugated iron; it would, of course, have originally been thatched.
|
|
This is a photo that I intended to be in the original Real Watership Down. However I messed
up the numbering - this was a duplicate number 13 - and so it never got scanned onto the photo CD. It's Nuthanger on a dull
day, in fact the day I saw Watership Down for the first time, and so the photo was rather dark and flat. Its a similar view to
how it appears in the film. One thing to note is that the roof extension on the barn facing us covers what look to be a pig sty.
The part of the byre visible here has since been demolished.
|
Nuthanger farm with all its out buildings in 1982. |
|
|
The sty at Nuthanger. |
Here's a blow-up of that sty. Yes, that's what it looks like all right.
The horizontal lines are caused by a limitation in my scanner, which doesn't cope very well with dark slides.
|
|
This is a rabbit's eye view of the back of Nuthanger farm house.
Adams' rabbits never ventured here.
|
The back of Nuthanger farm house. |
|
|
|
