Page:An Encyclopædia of Cottage, Farm, and Villa Architecture and Furniture.djvu/590

 566 COTTAGE, FARM, AND VILLA ARCHITECTURE. beautiful pattern for the joint tile to be used at the eaves, will be hereafter figured and described. 1226. The Gothic style may be displayed, in farm buildings, either by piers in the place of the Grecian pillars, with the heads of the panels pointed, and high steep roofs, as in fig. 788, § 752 ; by angular piers, terminating in low roofs ; by buttresses, with parapets, and a moderately higli roof; or by pointed openings and parapets, with battlements. 1227. The Old English Cottage Stt/le of building might be easily conferred on farm- eries by steep roofs, covered with plain tiles, with barge boards at the gable ends, and latticed windows. 1228. The Swiss Style would require far-projecting roofs, and there might be a con- tinued gallery or veranda round both the exterior and the interior of the low buildings, which would also be found useful in various ways. S?;cT. III. On constructing temporary, portable, and ambulatory Farmeries, and on altering Mansions, Monasteries, Manufactories, and other Buildings, so as to render them Jit for agricultural Purposes, 1229. A complete Farmery can seldom be required to be constructed either in a tem- porary or portable manner, or for the purpose of being readily moved from place to place ; but in all countries where the farms are large, and the farmers men of consider- able capital, it will, occasionally, be desirable to thresh out com on the spot where it grew, and to consume the straw, or to convert it into manure there. 1 230. The Construction of a Temporary Farmery is founded on the same principle as that of the Grecian Design, § 1221 ; that is, all the walls are formed of props at regular distances, and these distances are such that the space between the props is of suitable width for a door, a window, or a stall for a horse or cow ; while the removal of a prop affords a suitable opening for a cart or carriage. The panels between the props may be filled in with wattled work, faggots, straw, hurdles or matting, or clay nogging ; or with slight horizontal rails, to be clothed with fronds of spruce fir, furze, broom, holly branches, &c. AU the doors may be formed of wattled hurdles, as may also the shutters for the openings to be left as windows. The props, or posts, may be formed of young trees of any kind, more particular!}- l3?ches, or spruce fir, with the bark on, and the lower ends charred ; or, if the bark be removed, the extreme ends may be charred, and the entire prop kiln-dried and smoked with wood, so as to have its exterior surface powerfully impregnated with pyrolignous acid. The spray of hard-wooded trees, such as beech, elm, oak, ash, birch, &c., is preferable to that of resinous trees for producing this smoke ; and if the kiln be close at top, with no other opening than the door, a very few faggots will suffice to keep it filled with smoke for several weeks. All the tie-beains may consist of young straight spruce fir trees, and they ought to project so far at the eaves, as completely to protect the side walls ; across them inay be laid branches, and thatch over the whole, to be held on with turf. In some cases, a roof of shingles, tiles, or prepared paper laid on thin boards, or of corrugated iron, § 420, may be preferable to those of a more temporary description. In Poland, America, and other countries where timber is abundant, farmeries of this kind, if proper pains were taken to char the ends of the props, and to put on a roof that would completely exclude the weather, would last as long as the oak-built farmeries of England, some of which have stood for centuries. 1231. A Portable Farmery might be easily formed by having the props made to stand on stone, slate, or tile plinths, and the tie-beams of the roof made to fix on the tops of the props by wooden pins. All the rest is easy and obvious. Instead of wooden props and tie-beams, slight props of cast iron might be used with tie-rods of wrought iron, and all the roofing and panels might be formed of corrugated sheet iron. Well tarred or painted, such a farmery would last at least during a twenty-one years' lease ; and the time may probably come when farmeries of this kind will be erected bj* the tenant, as being cheaper than paying a high interest to the landlord for fixed buildings. In some parts of the country it might be cheaper to form the panels and doors of slate, of boards, or of wattled hurdles plastered, or the interstices stufTed with moss ; or they might be formed of clay nogging or straw matting ; but nowhere, we believe, could roofing of a durable nature be found cheaper than of corrugated iron. 1232. An Ambulatory Farmery may seem to some a visionary structure; but there are already ambulatory covers to ambulating threshing-machines, and there seems no reason why there should not be ambulatory barns, granaries, and shelter-houses for cattle. In France the shepherds have ambulatory houses, which are placed on wheels, and dragged from one part of the farm to another, as the pasturage of the flock or herd is changed. We have seen, § 1038, Mr. Taylor's ambulatory sheepfold ; and it is evi- dent that the sides of any building might be formed and placed on wheels in a sirnihu- manner. The floor, where a boarded floor was necessary, and also the roof, could be