Originally published February 2022.
Seemingly unused space can be receptacles of history.
In the middle of our farmyard sits an empty barn. The footprint is bigger than that of a village church, with chalk block work and the thick flint and brick walls dating back more than 260 years. A Czech refugee, Bruno Pogodin, during the Second World War, inscribed his name into the chalk, mournfully remarking, “They send me to my death”, when repatriated at the war’s end. Timbers in the roof once formed part of an even older building which was robbed, or dismantled, to make this one. That older building might explain the enigma of the nearby field, called The Barn Field, in which no building in living memory has stood, but no one really knows.
Our barn has not always been empty, either. It has homed a parade of agricultural change. Cart horses and race horses have lived there, tethered dairy cows milked and piglets fattened. Crops of wheat and stacks of hay sat inside its protection. More recently, well, only 50 years ago, lambing ewes interspersed with the building of a sailing boat by my father-in-law, listening to Ipi Tombi while high on the fumes of chandler’s glue. Aptly named Endymion, the boat’s name comes from a shepherd king who romanced a moon goddess. The owl who sometimes lives there sits on several of myriad ledges, has ancestors that saw much while also keeping the rats at bay, and relatives named after Athena, the goddess of wisdom.
Many visitors urge us to convert this venerable beauty into a house. They little realise the horror of their suggestion, for inside this building resides the soul and memory of the farm. Far from empty, its architecture frames the past and stills our happiness. Within is a sacred atmosphere, an air that connects us to the people who lived here before our family. It connects intimately to the local geology. The hard chalk quarried from the base of the nearby South Downs escarpment is sometimes called clunch, the flints picked from the same quarry probably exchanged for the clay marl that comes from some of our own fields. It is a shrine to lost craftsmanship. There is a presence yielding a guiding sense of respect that is inspired by beautiful creation. A focal point of activity which, though currently empty, still permeates our daily life.
“Great prophets have gone into the desert seeking wisdom and empty heaths provide space for the transition between sanity and madness”
Such emptiness has long figured in philosophy and spirituality. Great prophets have gone into the desert seeking wisdom and empty heaths provide space for the transition between sanity and madness. Did we giggle at school as King Lear vented his fury by commanding the weather to “Blow winds and crack your cheeks…”, while beset by a storm in an emptiness? A neighbouring farmer tells the tale of an old shepherd who, when grumpy, would retire single handed to the sheep pens, on that farm known as ‘The Willows’. “Gone to the willows” there becoming a phrase meaning “don’t disturb”. For this farm, peace lies simply in the quiet ordinariness of our old barn, with the utterance “He’s in the barn” echoing “Gone to the willows”.
“Meetings with several building surveyors have all been underpinned by the sense of awe that this historic place of work commands and, fortunately, unanimity on the purpose of insurance”
In December last year a mighty gale ‘cracked its cheeks’ to blow off a corner of the barn roof. On close inspection the breakage was much worse than appeared, as wooden joints had moved and parted across the whole framework. Cracks in the flintwork had widened worryingly. A moment we had long insured for had arrived and a passage of loss adjustors has come and gone. Verdict has been reached and the barn is to be fully restored, courtesy of the ‘storm damage’ clause. Meetings with several building surveyors have all been underpinned by the sense of awe that this historic place of work commands and, fortunately, unanimity on the purpose of insurance.
Next summer will see the tiles stripped and the skeleton of joists and roof beams exposed, by a team of local men. It will once more become a place of work, a deployment of long burnished skills and much old-fashioned lip pursing and head scratching. Perilous ladder work, back breaking lifts and careful use of chisel and drill, the tap of mallets and copious refreshment from the kitchen. A new chapter in its life will unfold and new timber from oaks already fallen in the woods of Ashburnham nearby will be fashioned into place. We will achieve a reinforcement of continuity for our empty barn. Long may it survive to house the peace and connect us all to history and to soil and, somehow, make the absurdity of farm economics
have gravity and purpose.
