Part 2 - Unearthing the Past

The soil along the west facing wall of the horse barn was level with the sill in places, and one of the first things that we did as part of the restoration was to remove some soil so that the new sills wouldn't rot out. Archaeologists will tell you that whenever you dig alongside an old building you are likely to find something interesting. In the case of the Phillips barn this was proven true.

Photo by Tevis Stites-Robertson

Door stone in front of north door on west side of the Horse Barn.

About a foot below what was grade-level, a door stone was found in front of the door in the north end of this wall. This indicates that the grade in that part of the horse yard had risen more than a foot from where it was when the barn was built. In addition to the constant influx of manure and dust, farmers over the years have doubtless filled in any holes or puddles in the yard with gravel from the creek, as we continue to do. After a century and a half these small additions of soil have become significant.

We found two foundations in our excavation in the horse yard. One, in the corner where the Horse Barn and Working Barn meet, was circular. According to Farm Manager Gary Houghton, it belonged to a wooden silo that once stood there but was later disassembled and sold to a neighboring farmer. At the south end of the west wall a concrete block foundation was unearthed. This foundation remains from the milk house built by Hart Cromwell in the 1940s and removed in 1980.

Artifacts unearthed during the restoration work include bolts, bones, horseshoes, and pintles. Other finds include a mattock head, a door handle, a knife guard from a sickle-bar mower, a piece of apron chain from a manure spreader, a crushed paint can, pieces of a china cup, and a glass plunger from a syringe found in the old drain under the milk room.

Corner where the Working Barn (left) and Horse Barn (right) foundations meet.

Thom Livingston, the restoration mason working on the project, said that the way the two foundations meet in the corner of the horse yard indicates that the two sections were built independently at different times, though he was unable to tell which was built first. There had been some question as to whether the Horse and Working Barns had been built at the same time or separately. Recently, when the interior concrete slab was removed to allow for the insertion of the new sill, I exposed the inside of that corner. It appears that the Working Barn foundation stops where it meets the Horse Barn, rather than turning north and running alongside the Horse Barn foundation. More concrete will have to be removed before a final determination can be made, but this fact combined with the fact that there was never a corner brace in the Working Barn where the door goes through to the Horse Barn indicates that the Horse Barn predates the Working Barn.

In another bout of earth removal, on September 20, 2001, some Hatchery moms helped dig footing holes inside the barn. These footings are for two lines of interior posts and beams to support the hay mow floor. Along the inside of one of these lines of holes, a lot of stone was encountered while digging. Upon further investigation, it was discovered that this stone was an old foundation. This wall is about six feet in from the east wall and runs parallel to it.

One of the footing holes dug in the floor of the Horse Barn showing the interior stone foundation wall.

In one place, it was found that the stonework extended two and a half feet below current grade. The stone is laid up with a lime-based mortar. This indicates a date probably later than the original section of the farmhouse (c. 1790), which is chinked with a clay-based mortar. The composition of the mortar at first inspection does not appear to match the original mortar found in the exterior foundation of the Henry Phillips Barn. There is a mortise hole in the original sill of the South end wall that is approximately in line with this foundation. This hole indicates that there was once an interior sill, running parallel with the east and west walls, on top of the interior foundation. My current theory, subject to future discoveries, is that this foundation was a part of a structure that predated the Henry Phillips Barn and that most likely burned down during Henry Phillips' lifetime. When Henry rebuilt, he opted to build a slightly larger barn to reflect the increased size of his operation. In so doing, he ended up with part of the earlier barn's foundation inside his barn, which he utilized rather than knocking down and burying. The sill he placed on this foundation would likely have run underneath the horse stalls and he probably used it as a base from which to build his stall partitions and other dividers. When more of the slab has been removed, we will hopefully discover more about this foundation.

Part I - Intro | Part 3 - Opening up Doors | Part 4 - Our Barn's a New Yorker?|