Grimwith High Laithe

'Laithe' comes from the Viking name of Barn. In the late 1970's, when Grimwith Resevoir was expanded to its current size, historians recognised that this barn was an important example of a cruck barn, and so it was preserved. In medieval times all the barns in the North Yorkshire Dales would have been built using huge A-shaped wooden frames called crucks. The walls would have been infilled with wood or rubble, and the roofs would have been thatched with straw or heather. By the 17th Century, the big trees needed to make the crucks had become scarce, and so, as the wooden cruck barns began to rot, they were gradually replaced by the stone walled and roofed ones we see today. This barn may date to the very end of the period when cruck barns were still being built, so it is probably about 400 years old. 59 photos captured using Nikon D200 (2k) and processed with Photoscan and XNormal