The corn was brought to the barn for storage and in winter it was worked upon. The left hand passage bay in the barn is also the threshing floor, where sheaves of corn were laid and hit with the flail to separate the grain from the chaff. Shown on the left is a flail, which rests in the passage bay.
Towards the end of the 18th century threshing machines were introduced. This culminated in the Swing Riots of 1830-33 when farm workers protested about the loss of their winter work. This is a picture of an early threshing machine in the museum. The sheaves were held whilst being threshed, rather than passing through as they did on later machines.
Grain could be further cleaned by passing it through a corn cleaner.
The stalk of the corn could be chopped up into small pieces by a chaff cutter and then mixed with beans for animal feed. The image shows chaff cutters.
In Bay XIII there are a couple of bean mills, which cracked the field beans before they were added to the feed. There is also a cake crusher, which broke up thin slabs of linseed and other cake for mixing with the feed. Bay XIII also includes a flocking machine, which was used to shred wool, sacking etc. for filling saddles and collars. It was also used on the land.