The Drive-Through Barn with Wagon Store @museum.de

M: This impressive barn is a real multi-purpose building:

Beneath the hamm – the wide, semi-circular overhanging roof on the north side of the building – was a nice, dry place for agricultural machinery: a sturdy wagon and a plough, for example.

F: At the same time, the underside of the low-pitched roof could be used for drying. Beans, onions and other garden produce was hung up here before being brought indoors in late autumn.

M: Inside the barn, blocks of peat, sheaves of grain and hay or straw were stored and dried.

And to make sure the interior was always well ventilated, the panels in the timber frame were left without daub. They only had the wattle, made of woven willow or hazel branches, so the air flow through the gaps was unrestricted.

If dried heather was used as infill – as in the four panels on the left-hand side of the building – the structure was somewhat better insulated, but still let in enough air for the drying process to proceed.

F: So the wagons loaded with peat or sheaves of grain didn't have to manoeuvre inside the barn, it had two sets of doors on opposite sides of the building. The wagons could drive in one side and out the other.

If you look closely at the doors, you'll notice that all the boards were cut from the trunk of a single, slightly warped oak tree.