INDIAN HEAD, Sask. – Saskatchewan’s first round barn is rising again.
Dismantled in April 2008 because of its deteriorating condition, the 127-year-old Bell Barn will soon stand complete in a location just north of its original site near Indian Head.
Bricklayers and stonemasons are happy to recreate history, said project manager Burleigh Hill of Gracom Masonry.
Many tradespeople go through their entire careers without such an opportunity, he added.
“We’ve never, in my years, reconstructed a heritage building to this extent,” he said after an Aug. 25 funding announcement by the provincial government.
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Local residents who formed the Bell Barn Society to rebuild the barn as a heritage site and interpretive centre are adamant: this is not a replica.
The crew is using stone salvaged from the original barn supplemented with local stone that Hill said could have been in the original but was simply passed over at the time.
About 60 percent of the outer walls will be original stone. Workers are placing the stones in a random rubble pattern, mixing the old and new so that the entire barn will contain original material.
Since the ceremonial placing of the first stones at the end of July, the 19.5-metre-diameter barn has taken shape and is on track for completion this fall.
The walls are 60 centimetres thick and are already more than half their eventual height of 4.3 metres.
“The biggest challenge is to build something 220 feet (67 metres) around, two feet (60 cm) thick, and build that plumb for 14 feet (4.3 metres),” Hill said.
The original gun port windows are part of the design. They might seem odd today, but there were good reasons for including them in the frontier environment of 1882.
The Bell Farm holds a prominent place in Saskatchewan history in general and agriculture in particular.
It was established as a corporate farm by the federal government of prime minister John A. Macdonald. Officially, it was the Qu’Appelle Valley Farming Co. but soon took on the name of its general manager, major William R. Bell.
Within a year, more than 100 buildings stood on the site. The farm encompassed a solid block of 53,000 acres, or 332 quarters.
Twenty-seven cottages – homes for the 100 tenant farmers – stood around the barn, which housed 36 horses.
The centre stack of the distinctive barn served as a lookout.
Victim of war
During the North-West Rebellion of 1885, general Frederick Middleton was sent to suppress the resistance. He took the horses and men from the Bell Farm to fight at the historic battles of Fish Creek and Batoche.
The farm’s operations almost stopped during this time, but it also led to the discovery of the value of summerfallow.
However, poor crops, frost and drought led to the farm’s failure and by 1889 most of the land had been sold. The government used a portion to establish what was then known as the Dominion Experimental Farm, the country’s first research station.
The nearby shelterbelt centre was established because of the farm’s experience with drought.
The Saskatchewan ministries of agriculture and tourism, parks, culture and sport recently announced funding of $50,000 each for the project. In July, the federal government contributed $700,000 and local fundraising and corporate donations have raised about $500,000.
Maurice Delage, chair of the society’s fundraising and construction committees, said the latest contributions have pushed the society close to its $1.3 million goal.
“I’m sure major Bell … could have never foreseen what we’re doing here today,” he said.
The barn will contain several stalls to illustrate what it looked like when in full use.
After the barn is completed, the society intends to build a replica of a tenant cottage to use as the interpretive centre and house washroom facilities.
