Leaving No Stone Unturned
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Mason Salvages 1800s-Era Barns, Builds Period Edifices From Scratch
Saturday, August 23, 2008
When you look around Loudoun County, it's not hard to imagine that this was once considered some of the finest farmland in Virginia. It spreads in gentle slopes, and you can still see sweeping expanses of tillable dirt that aren't covered with concrete and steel.
Loudoun had lots of barns in which to store its agricultural bounty, until Nov. 29, 1864. That was when the Union Army figured out that the barns were filled with crops and animals that were feeding the Confederate enemy. From Nov. 29 through Dec. 2, 1864, historians say, Union Army troops burned 230 barns in Loudoun, along with their winter stores of grain. The troops also destroyed or drove away hundreds of horses and thousands of domestic animals.
When Loudoun builder Allen Cochran recites that piece of history, the part about the burned barns, you realize it's a subject close to his heart. You can almost smell the smoke.
Photo Gallery
Audio Slideshow: Allen Cochran
Allen Cochran, left, and Harry Middleton, right, on the first floor of the barn. The barn is on two levels with both the front and back at ground level. (Bill Snead)
Allen Cochran in a barn outside Middleburg that his company built for Alan Croft over a period of three years. (Bill Snead)
Harry Middleton's father as a youngster on the family dairy farm. (Courtesy of Alan Cochran)
Allen Cochran's and his crew restored old hand-hewn roof supports, repaired brickwork, cleaned and rebuilt much of the Historic Oakdale School located in Lincoln. Built in 1815 it served as a Quaker school until 1885 a few years after public schools opened. (Bill Snead)
A painting of the original Middleton farm near Herndon. Restored versions of this barn are in Frying Pan Park and at Middleton's farm near Middleburg. (Courtesy of Alan Cochran)
The fireplace in the Middleton home, built by Allen Cochran's crew, includes stone that were originally cut by Harry Middleton's great-grandfather after he arrived in Virginia from England in the 1800's. (Bill Snead)
Harry Middleton in the back of his barn with a 1952 Model WD Allis Chalmers tractor, left, and a 1944 Oliver Low Crop 80 on the right. (Bill Snead)
Harry Middleton on his property showing the rear of his barn and his home near Middleburg. (Bill Snead)
Allen Cochran showing the limestone mortar still in good shape used on the old barn he uses partly as an office. (Bill Snead)
Allen Cochran's and his crew restored old hand-hewn roof supports, repaired brickwork, cleaned and rebuilt much of the Historic Oakdale School located in Lincoln. Built in 1815 it served as a Quaker school until 1885 a few years after public schools opened. (Bill Snead)
Allen Cochran's and his crew restored old hand-hewn roof supports, repaired brickwork, cleaned and rebuilt much of the Historic Oakdale School located in Lincoln. Built in 1815 it served as a Quaker school until 1885 a few years after public schools opened. (Bill Snead)
What used to be a hayloft in Middleton's original barn is a place for the owner to store some of his old farm equipment and horse and wagon gear. (Bill Snead)
The view from the rear of the Middleton home looking towards his barn. In the foreground is a 24-pound (the weight of the cannonball) cannon built in Richmond and shipped to Fort Morgan, Alabama in 1861. (Bill Snead)
Allen Cochran's and his crew restored old hand-hewn roof supports, repaired brickwork, cleaned and rebuilt much of the Historic Oakdale School located in Lincoln. Built in 1815 it served as a Quaker school until 1885 a few years after public schools opened. (Bill Snead)
What used to be a hayloft in Middleton's original barn is a place for the owner to store some of his old farm equipment and horse and wagon gear. (Bill Snead)
A brick kiln was built behind Cochran's barn to heat limestone rock in the process of making lime mortar for use in repairing old brick and stonework. (Bill Snead)
Allen Cochran and his crew restored old hand-hewn roof supports, repaired brickwork, cleaned and rebuilt much of the Historic Oakdale School located in Lincoln. Built in 1815 it served as a Quaker school until 1885 a few years after public schools opened. (Bill Snead)
Allen Cochran holds two pieces of limestone. The white version has been heated in the kiln and the black has not been processed. (Bill Snead)
Allen Cochran, right, and Harry Middleton, left, outside the barn that was was once on the Middleton family farm near Herndon. Cochran Masonary and Timberframing moved the barn in pieces from Herndon with part of it going to Frying Pan Park and this part to Middleton's home outside Middleburg. Middleton's home is in the background. (Bill Snead)
This barn built for Alan Croft on his land outside Middleburg is a replica of a barn that once sat on a property near the Greenway and Route 7. Allen Cochran, the builder, stands on the rock bridge leading to the barn's front door. It was a three-year, on-and-off, project. (Bill Snead)
Cochran's livelihood revolves around barns. He builds, restores and salvages them, running his business from a barn next to his house just west of Hamilton. He was born and raised in Lincoln, just 161/27 miles down the road.
He began his trade as an apprentice, laying stone for Louis Whitesell, whom Cochran calls "one of the best." Three years later, he started Cochran's Stone Masonry and Timberframing, "with a pickup and a bag of tools."
"We started out as masons ... lots of period and traditional stone masonry. And we wanted our work to look like it did when things were constructed in the 18th and 19th century," said Cochran, 43.
He and his crew have worked on many projects in Loudoun and some outside the county, reconstructing barns and houses as well as erecting period buildings from scratch.
LIME MORTAR
Please bear with us while we tell you about lime mortar.
By Allen Cochran
- Lime mortar is mostly made from limestone chalk but can be made from oyster and clam shells.
- Lime mortar is one of the oldest building materials in the world. It was used in Europe and the Middle East for hundreds of years. The Great Wall of China is held together with the stuff and the Romans used it extensively.
- If a brick or stone house was built before the 1900s those materials were held together with lime putty.
- When people with good intentions repoint today they use Portland cement, which is much harder than the materials they hold together. The bricks/stone are still sucking in the moisture that is trapped in the materials, and this moisture causes plaster to peel, creates mildew and paint won't stay on walls.
- You could probably go on any masonary job that you see between here and Arlington, stop and ask any mason and I don't care if he's 20 or 60, what they know about lime putty or lime mortar and he'll probably look at you like you don't know what you're talking about.
For the past few years Cochran has presented a workshop at his shop in Lincoln, Va. The next workshop will be next spring at Cochran Stone Masonary and Timberframing. Call 540-338-1603 for more information.
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"We match the materials in the houses and actually go into the fields and pick stone up from fence rows, and we salvage buildings to get sedimentary stone, not the volcanic stone that's around here," he said. "I certainly don't want to be quoted as a geologist, cause I'm not," he added, "but I know rocks."
He also knows about 175-year-old beams, round or flat-sided and bigger around than telephone poles, which he has hauled from places such as West Virginia to use in restorations.
"We started out as masons, but we ended up doing basically any type of work a client would ask," he said.
After nearly 20 years in the business, he has a reputation for leaving things in better shape than he finds them. He was involved in repair work on the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery; the restoration of Montpelier, the estate of former president James Madison; and the extensive reconstruction of the building that houses the Loudoun Heritage Farm Museum in Sterling. He has worked on many projects in historic Waterford.
When Harry Middleton sold his family's dairy farm in Fairfax County and moved to Middleburg in 2002, Cochran's team disassembled a stone barn that had been built by Middleton's great-grandfather and incorporated the pieces into a new house and barn erected on the Middleburg property.
"Harry's great-grandfather Henry Bradley was a stone mason from England, and he actually cut some of the stones that we used," Cochran said as he showed images of the project on his computer.
Cochran installed some beams from the old barn in the ceiling of a large room in the house, and he built the room's huge fireplace using Bradley's stonework.
Middleton's historical roots also are found in parts of the flooring, which includes staves taken from the wooden silo at the old family farm in Fairfax. A photo on the wall shows Harry's father, as a youngster, with milk cans bearing Bradley's initials.
"He shipped his milk from Herndon to Washington, D.C., and that required a special permit even then," Middleton said of his great-grandfather.
Like Bradley's barn, Middleton's version is a bank barn set into the side of a hill. The design produces a natural shelter for stalls under the rear of the barn.
A photo of another barn popped up on Cochran's computer.
"Now," he said, "take a look at this barn. . . . We matched it architecturally with an old one that sat where the [Dulles] Greenway and Route 7 [Bypass] intersect, right down to the mortar. . . . Took over three years.
"As far as I'm concerned, it's our crown jewel."
Cochran was just getting warmed up.
Tagged: barn, development, Middleburg
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