Most of the timber-framed, aisled barns I have visited have been timber-clad. Usually the cladding is in the form of clapboard planks. These would have been split by hand in earlier barns, but from the seventeenth century onwards they would have been sawn. They were overlapped over the one below to shed the rain (bottom right). The planks were often treated with a black tar paint to make them waterproof as at Coggeshall Grange (below).
The planks were usually laid horizontally, but in some early barns, as at Harmondsworth Manor, Frindsbury Manor (top right) and Littlebourne, they were set vertically, in which case they were not overlapped. Timber-framed barns invariably have a stone or brick plinth wall to lift the frame above the damp ground and give it a level base. Roofs were originally thatched or tiled.but many have been replaced with cheaper and more easily maintained corrugate iron.
