Barn Club by Robert J. Somerville

There’s an ancient barn in the village of Wallington made of elm. Built in 1786, it stands strong and beautiful as ever. It’s the barn in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and it continues to inspire and instruct today. Visiting the barn prompted architect Robert J. Somerville to build and raise a traditional elm barn the old way - by hand.

Barn Club celebrates community and craftsmanship.

Barn Club is the story of the Carley Barn project, but it is also a technical manual recording terms and techniques that were once common village knowledge; knowledge lost now in our preference for machines and imports. More than a record of old ways though, Barn Club provides a blueprint for future barn-building.

There are twelve chapters. The early ones cover the appeal of outdoor craftmanship, the identification and uses of elm, the crippling effect of Dutch elm disease, and the possibilities of returning elm to the landscape. In tone and topic, the first third reads like contemporary nature-writing.

With the ground set, the book moves into the woods and the work begins. Sketching, felling, milling. The narrative toughens into a manual explaining how to make a trestle table to keep timber, tools, and teacups at waist-height; the carving of wooden pegs, plumb-bob scribing, fettling, cutting sole plates, and making scarf joints. There is detailed instruction and illustration on the making of mortice and tenon joints, and much delightful vocabulary: scantling, torrak, froe, maul, and kerf.

The earlier voice returns in the final chapter for the triumph of the barn raising. It’s a heartwarming sequence. The tension, the helmets, the pikestaffs. Each volunteer essential. Up goes the back wall frame, up goes the front. Like clockwork, the studs are pegged and nailed. The roof truss, gable studs, and purlins up and in. Merriment and applause, cakes and ale. For the volunteers, eighteenth-century carpentry is now living memory.

In Barn Club, Somerville defends the elm, advocating its return to the British landscape. He presents the case for living in harmony with nature, of understanding its value, of working outdoors late into summer afternoons, kites and kestrels overhead, of people together creating something larger and more enduring than themselves. Barn Club celebrates community and craftsmanship.

Movie-Time: There’s a twelve-minute film of the building and raising of Carley Barn. It’s rather stirring, and well-worth watching. A perfect primer for the book.

Many thanks to Robert J. Somerville, Chelsea Green Publishing, and NetGalley for my advanced reading copy.

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