Barns

Back in the winter, whilst walking the dog, I noticed that a recent gale had demolished the old corrugated barn at Stumpy Cross. This reminded me of the role that barns and haylofts played in the lives of children growing up in the countryside in the past and the changed nature of childhood and young adulthood in the countryside today.

Some of my earlist memories are of playing around in the hayricks in the big field at the side of Forden Lane (the small track that can be accessed from Silverdale), we built our camps there and watched the rabbits running out of the grass when the hay was being cut. Later in childhood, we had our gang headquarters in various barns and tallets around the village and hid out from opposing forces. Later still, I would imagine that a lot of us had our first cigarettes in the barns and haylofts without ever seeming to burn them down, the occasional can of Cider or similar and I suspect that many will have had their first sexual encounters of one sort or another in them, many of which I am sure have left a lasting impression. The barns and haylofts were for generations an important part of the process of growing up.

With the development of farms as agribusinesses, the rise of the culture of health and safety and the now ever present fear about the safety of children in particular, barns and the like, where they still exist, have become largely off limits to the young. Whilst one can see the necessity for greater control over the countryside and the uses that are made of it, the removal of barns as a part of the social life leads inevitably to young people having a restricted enviornment in which to explore themselves and the world around them.