Outbuilding Explained

An outbuilding, sometimes called an accessory building^[1] or a dependency, is a building that is part of a residential or agricultural complex but detached from the main sleeping and eating areas. Outbuildings are generally used for some practical purpose, rather than decoration or purely for leisure (such as a pool house or a tree house), although luxury greenhouses such as orangeries or ferneries may also be considered outbuildings. This article is limited to buildings that would typically serve one property, separate from community-scale structures such as gristmills, water towers, fire towers, or parish granaries. Outbuildings are typically detached from the main structure, so places like wine cellars, root cellars and cheese caves may or may not be termed outbuildings depending on their placement. A buttery, on the other hand, is never an outbuilding because by definition is it is integrated into the main structure.

Separating these work spaces from the main home "removed heat, obnoxious odors, and offending vermin" and decreased the risk of house fires and food-borne illnesses.^[2] The study of historical outbuildings also offers information about the lives of workers otherwise excluded from the history of a place, since one possible purpose of an outbuilding was to reinforce class boundaries.

Outbuildings are typically constructed in a vernacular architectural style. Outbuildings can be valuable resources for architectural historians as they may "offer insight unavailable in traditional documentary sources."^[3] Architectural historian William Tishler argues that in addition to documenting outbuildings, researchers need to inspect attics and basements "because it's there that you see how things are put together."^[4]

Researchers studying detached kitchens in Wiltshire identified some common characteristics of the outbuildings: non-standard floor plans, no large windows, location near the main house, footprint smaller than main house, and little or no interior ornamentation.^[5]

Types

• Bunkhouses
• Slave quarters
• Tenant housing
• Itinerant labor housing^[6]
• Bothies
• Wash houses
• Saunas
• Lavoirs (laundries)
• Wood sheds
• Radio shacks
• Barns, possibly incorporating haylofts and/or outdoor animal pens
• Stables for horses
• Mangers
• Hay barracks
• Outhouses or privies
• Spring houses
• Ice houses^[7]
• Pump houses or windpumps
• Tankhouses
• Summer kitchens, detached kitchens, cookhouses, dirty kitchens, etc.
• Bake ovens^[8]
• Smokehouses
• Root cellars
• Cold storage
• Pit-houses
• Dugout (shelter)
• Wine cellars and wine caves
• Cheese caves
• Butcher houses (after an outdoor slaughter, preparing the cuts of meat for long-term storage would take place in a butcher house)
• Poultry houses
• Pigpens or piggeries
• Milkhouses or dairy barns
• Shearing sheds
• Dovecotes, columbaria, pigeonniers
• Dog houses, kennels
• Siloes
• Granaries grain bins
• Corn cribs
• Rice barns, winnowing barns
• Hemp-processing houses^[9]
• Threshing barns
• Potato houses
• Greenhouses
• Illicit grow houses (marijuana, psilocybin mushrooms, et al.)
• Detached conservatories, orangeries, walipinis, pineapple pits, ferneries, etc.
• Coach houses
• Machine houses and tool sheds
• Packhouses
• Drying sheds, dry houses
• Kilns
• Forges or smithies
• Sugar shacks
• Oast houses, malt houses
• Cider houses
• Still sheds
• Tobacco barns
• Gin house (for a cotton gin)^[10]
• Guard houses^[11]
• Guest houses
• Workshops
• Detached garages
• Scale sheds
• Roadside stands

See also

• Well
• Cistern
• Croft
• Connected farm
• Barnyard
• Shed
• Hut
• Lean-to
• Pergola
  • Chashitsu (Japanese tea houses)
• Grillkota (Scandinavian grillhouses)

Derivative extravagance

• Folly
• Garden hermit

Further reading

• Book: Olmert, Michael . Kitchens, smokehouses, and privies : outbuildings and the architecture of daily life in the eighteenth-century Mid-Atlantic . 2009 . Cornell University Press . 978-0-8014-4791-4 . Ithaca . 271812400.

Notes and References

1. Book: Allen, William . "Harmonizing the Outbuildings," House & Garden . 1910 . Condé Nast Publications . 14–15 . en.
2. Linebaugh . Donald W. . 1994 . "All the Annoyances and Inconveniences of the Country": Environmental Factors in the Development of Outbuildings in the Colonial Chesapeake . Winterthur Portfolio . 29 . 1 . 1–18 . 10.1086/496641 . 1181448 . 162285380 . 0084-0416.
3. McMurry . Sally . 2014-01-01 . Buildings as Sources for US Agricultural History . Agricultural History . 88 . 1 . 45–67 . 10.3098/ah.2014.88.1.45 . 10.3098/ah.2014.88.1.45 . 0002-1482.
4. Martin . Frank Edgerton . 2002 . Field Trips Into History . Landscape Architecture . 92 . 2 . 80–91 . 44673338 . 0023-8031.
5. Broad . John . January 2015 . Making sense of Detached Kitchens: the implications of documentary evidence from seventeenth-century Wiltshire . Vernacular Architecture . 46 . 1 . 1–7 . 10.1080/03055477.2015.1123411 . 164022626 . 0305-5477.
6. Corrado . Alessandra . Caruso . Francesco Saverio . Cascio . Martina Lo . Nori . Michele . Palumbo . Letizia . Triandafyllidou . Anna . 2018 . INTRODUCTION: UNPACKING THE DEMAND FOR UNDECLARED WORK IN THE AGRICULTURAL SECTOR IN SOUTHERN ITALY . Is Italian Agriculture A 'Pull Factor' for Irregular Migration – and, if So, Why? . 2–3.
7. Elizabeth Collins Cromley . 2012 . Frank Lloyd Wright in the Kitchen . Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum . 19 . 1 . 18 . 10.5749/buildland.19.1.0018.
8. Web site: Outbuildings and Other Structures . 2023-02-18 . Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission . en-US.
9. Web site: Kennedy . Rachel . Macintire . William . 1999 . AGRICULTURAL AND DOMESTIC OUTBUILDINGS IN CENTRAL AND WESTERN KENTUCKY, 1800-1865 . Kentucky Historic Preservation Office.
10. Book: Johnson, Walter . River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom . Belknap Press of Harvard University Press . 2013 . 9780674074880 . Cambridge . 183 . en-us . 2012030065 . 827947225 . 26179618M . Walter Johnson.
11. Margueron . Jean-Claude . December 2000 . A Stroll through the Palace . Near Eastern Archaeology . en . 63 . 4 . 205–207 . 10.2307/3210786 . 3210786 . 155354601 . 1094-2076.