Medieval barn restored by National Trust of Guernsey

Part of the restoration saw the oak beams reinstated in the roof

The National Trust of Guernsey's barn at Les Caches offers a look back into the history of farm life.

The building has been restored by the Trust to its 19th century condition using traditional material and techniques.

Architect Andrew Dyke said: "It's incredible to stand here and look at these stones and imagine some medieval mason putting it together."

The barn was originally built in the mid-1400s.

Andrew explained: "What we tried to do in the restoration of the building was reconstruct the building to show the way they were constructed and what they originally looked like."

When the barn was acquired by the National Trust and it announced plans to restore it in 2000 the barn looked like many other barns around the island, which have been modernised to an extent.

However, some evidence remained that the barn had more history than was first apparent.

Les Caches Barn was restored by the Trust more than 10 years

A large part of this evidence stemmed from the fireplace which has now been restored.

When the work began on the site, however, all that was visible was a pink granite corbel that which Andrew said "surprised" the people researching the barn.

He said it was very low for such an item, but, further inspection showed that, "The floor level inside the building, over the centuries, had got higher, originally it would have been a beaten earth floor."

Over the years this was augmented with straw, wood and later stone, which meant the fireplace had become almost totally buried.

As well as restoring the fireplace the work on the barn involved adding new oak beams, much like those that would have been in place when the barn was first built and re-thatching the roof so it would match the style of roof used on Guernsey farm buildings up until the 19th Century.

The fire place in the barn was almost buried by earlier development

Another element of the barn that was rebuilt was the tourelle staircase.

Andrew explained that during the planning and research process they realised there had originally been such a staircase on the exterior wall which had been removed, but the doors from it were still obvious in the stonework.

So the exterior structure was rebuilt using clay mortar dug out of the ground. Andrew said: "It's probably the only tourelle built with clay mortar in the last several hundred years."

As well as demonstrating the history of farming buildings in Guernsey, Andrew said the restored barn also showed how such building were originally constructed in a local and totally sustainable, carbon-free way.