Cleaning the timbers is very time consuming and labour intensive, but also very therapeutic and it's strange to wonder where these timbers had been used previously and imagine who it was that worked on them in the past and when this was.

With the timbers cleaned you can see all of the old joiners numeral marks and peg holes.
Apparently our oak timbers would probably have originally been cut and used in a wooden ship. Some of the timbers (mainly obvious on the 3 massive 18 foot long base lintels) still have rounded sides and edges to stop you cutting your head on the sharp edges where they would have been over doorways in the ship and slots for other joints.


Chester is only about 30 miles away and they used to break up the old wooden ships there and sell the materials for re-use. Some of the timbers were then probably re-used in houses, more ships or some other types of buildings again and again before being re-used for the last time in our old barn. The timbers are probably about 3 or 4 hundred years old and we have thought about getting some of them dendro-dated to establish exactly when they were felled, if we do will will let you know.