Peggy and Bruce Earle
Devon
Peggy Earle spent much of her childhood in an old Chester County bank barn - a two-story barn on a hillside with ground-level access to both floors - where she cared for her horses and spent time with her father. But in Devon, where she and her husband, Bruce, have lived for 25 years, available bank barns are few and far between. So after Googling "moving a barn," and discovering Mike Hart - a local guy and history buff who would happily move a structure to the location of your choosing - Earle was hooked.
"We've lived in Devon our whole lives and wanted to stay there, so we needed to bring a barn to us."
Hart of Hartland Demolition & Restoration recommended a barn out in Red Hill that was similar to the one Earle loved as a child, and soon they began the year-long process of moving it piece by piece to the Main Line and restoring it.
"The first thing they do is take videos of the barn, and then staple a number onto every single beam because they reconstruct it like a puzzle," said Earle. "We saved all of the doors and also the stone from the original foundation, so were able to put it all back together intact."
Well, almost. Insulating the barn, now used as a guesthouse and entertaining area, meant Hart and architect Richard Buchanan had to remove the exterior boards, treat them, and use them for the interior. But that added several inches to the overall width of the structure, which required a new beam to span the gap between walls. Earle also added a forebay, or overhang typical of Pennsylvania barns like her father's. "Everything else is original, including the general layout of the three bays," she said. "Sometimes we didn't use everything exactly in the same place it was before the move, but we always ended up using it for something."
