Alpaca

I had a barn day today. I've been researching barns in Dorset and now know a lot more about them and where some of the most interesting ones are. I even found several splendid ones while driving to Abbotsbury and back.

I have put several photos on Flickr but feel I need to blip something that hasn't got four walls and a roof. I liked this alpaca (if that's what it is) that was grazing next to Abbotsbury tithe barn.

Incidentally, I don't think the barn at Whitcombe I featured last week is a tithe barn after all. Tithe barns (for holding the one-tenth share of the harvest given to the church) are usually big and old. The church at Whitcombe is too small to have supported a sizeable barn like the one at Whitcombe.

Abbotsbury is the kind of barn generally known as a tithe barn. It was built around the fourteenth century and was originally even bigger than it is now. I'll take some more attractive pictures when they've refilled the lake, which is currently full of earth-moving equipment, and will blip it as part of my Dorset barn series.