Long Eddy Barn

Simply a barn built into a hillside or bank that makes use of the difference in elevation on the front and back of the barn. The uphill side can access the second floor. The downhill side accesses the ground floor. Typically, cows were kept in the ground floor and hay stored above could be easily pitchforked down to the cow mangers.

Most often these chiseled markings appear as Roman numerals on barn beams. They were inscribed there in scribe-ruled barns as way for the joiner, or builder, to keep track of which beams went where as he moved them around. Adjacent beams would have the same number.

They were not always Roman numerals, but often a unique system of symbols worked out by an individual builder.