Elrigbeag

The rectangular barn at Elrigbeag (formerly known as Elrigmore (en.1*)) is situated 2.3km NE of Maam steading (No. 224), and was built in 1797 to provide additional drying capacity for the meadows and cornfields in the upper part of Glen Shira. It occupied the site of an earlier barn, but the existing building shares many structural features with those at the Maltland (No. 197) and Maam, as instructed by the 5th Duke of Argyll, and appears to incorporate no older work (n.2). The contractor for the masonwork was John Tavish (en.3*), and the Gothick treatment of the gables follows the style adopted by Robert Mylne at Maam, where Tavish had also been the contractor.

The map of the environs of Inveraray published by Langlands in 1801, which recommends the barn to the attention of visitors, shows it freestanding and encircled by the termination of the road from the Dubh Loch, but before 1874 two wings were added at right angles on the NE. One of these, and other lean-to additions to both NE and SW, were removed in 1984.

The barn measures 22.7m by 10.5m over all and is two storeys in height. Its original masonry is of large blocks of rubble, roughly dressed at the quoins and bonded in lime mortar with frequent vertical groups of pinnings, while the later masonry is less massive in character. In the original form the side-walls each contained five bays with two storeys of timber infilling, divided by square masonry piers which rise 4.8m to the wall-head. At some time in the 19th century all but the centre bay in the SW wall were infilled with masonry incorporating three simple cross let-slits in each bay at first-floor level, and ground-floor doorways in the second and fourth bays. In the NE wall the SE bay was similarly infilled, with two vertical slits at first-floor level, but the original hinged louvres of the central bays were partially preserved behind an added lean-to building. The bays were divided horizontally by massive lintels at a height of 3m, set flush with the outer faces of the piers.

The angles are marked by clasping-buttresses, and these, as well as the other piers, rise from level plinths. The gable-walls each incorporated two tall arch-pointed openings with a large pointed quatrefoil recess in the spandrel; the lower parts of these openings are now filled with masonry, but the archheads in the NW gable retain fixed timber louvres. The modern roof-covering is of asbestos sheeting, but the gables retain moulded barge-boards attached to sprockets, probably of late 19th-century date.

The interior of the barn is divided axially by a series of rectangular piers, aligned with those of the side-walls and rising 9.6m to carry the roof-ridge. At ground-floor level the building is subdivided and preserves no original features, but the upper floor is undivided, measuring 20.5m by 8.1m. The renewed floor-joists are carried on massive transverse beams built into the axial and outer piers. These timbers, and several of the intermediate lintels in the side-bays, appear to be original, as are the massive paired wall-plates carried on the outer piers. The inner wall-plate on each side is composed of five lengths, scarf-jointed above the piers and, on the NE wall, bearing incised Roman assembly-numerals. The double-leaved hinged louvre-doors, of which three remain in situ, are divided diagonally by curved braces into which the inclined slats were fitted.

Built into the axial piers, at a height of 2.7m above the first floor, there is a series of projecting horizontal timbers. The lowest ones, in the short faces of the piers, support and are fixed with wooden pegs to others set into the side-faces, and these all appear to be original. They now carry a complex group of later struts supporting the collar-beams of the renewed timber roof, and in some places also carry diagonal braces to the rafters, but they may originally have been part of a system of moveable drying-frames such as was employed in other Argyll Estate barns (Nos. 197,210,224). The ridgepiece is modern, and the stepped tops of the axial piers may have been designed to carry triple ridge-purlins.

RCAHMS 1992, visited April 1984