Storehouses and warehouses

History and fun facts

Before lorries and cold stores existed, everything a town or monastery needed had to be kept somewhere dry, cool and safe. That is why the same clever tricks turn up all over the world: building high, air underneath, thick walls and a cellar.

Canal warehouses in Amsterdam

In the Dutch Golden Age (17th century) Amsterdam merchants built hundreds of warehouses along the canals and on the Western Islands. They held grain, timber, spices, tobacco and other goods. A warehouse is narrow and deep, with a loading door on every floor straight above the one below and a hoist beam with a pulley at the top. Ships moored in front of the door and the cargo went straight up on a rope to the right floor.

• Many Amsterdam fronts lean forward slightly. This is called building "op vlucht": a load on the rope is then less likely to bump into the front.
• Warehouses often had shutters instead of much glass. The goods did not need daylight, and shutters were cheaper and safer.
• Warehouses were often given a name, shown on the front. A skipper then knew at once where to go.
• Today most canal warehouses are homes or offices, but the hoist beams are still used to haul furniture inside.

Bryggen in Bergen

Bryggen is the old wharf of Bergen in Norway. From the 14th century into the 18th century the German Hanseatic League kept a trading office there. Merchants traded dried fish (stockfish) from northern Norway for grain and other goods. The wooden warehouses stand with their narrow gables to the water, in long rows along passages with galleries.

• Bryggen burned down many times. After the great fire of 1702 it was rebuilt in the old way, and those buildings still stand.
• Bryggen has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1979.
• No fire was allowed in the wooden warehouses. Heating and cooking happened in separate stone rooms behind the buildings.

Tithe barns

In the Middle Ages farmers had to give a tenth of their harvest to the church: the tithe. Monasteries and churches kept that grain in enormous barns. Well-known examples are Great Coxwell and Bradford-on-Avon in England and the abbey barn of Ter Doest near Lissewege in Belgium. Many of these barns were really the great grain barns of a monastic farm.

• The big doors opposite each other let a cart with hay or sheaves drive in. Grain was threshed on the threshing floor between them, and the draught between the doors blew the chaff away.
• Buttresses take the push of the heavy timber roof and of the walls.
• The narrow slits in the walls let air in, so the grain would not go mouldy.

Roman horrea

A horreum (plural horrea) is a Roman warehouse. The city of Rome had dozens, because grain from places such as Egypt and North Africa had to be stored for its people. The Horrea Galbana in Rome and the horrea in the harbour town of Ostia were built around a courtyard with rows of rooms. Army forts, such as those along Hadrian's Wall, had long narrow granaries with buttresses.

• The floor rested on small pillars or low walls. Air flowed under the floor through holes in the outer wall, so the grain stayed dry and cool.
• A raised floor also kept rats and mice out.
• A heap of grain pushes outwards against the walls. That is why fort granaries had thick walls and buttresses.
• At Housesteads and Corbridge in northern England you can still see the foundations of such granaries.

Stabbur, hórreo and staddle stones

In Norway a farm kept its food in a stabbur: a wooden storehouse on posts. Food such as dried meat and flatbread was kept below, often clothing and valuables above. In Galicia and Asturias in Spain and in northern Portugal stand hórreos and espigueiros: granaries on stone legs with flat stone caps. In England granaries were set on mushroom-shaped staddle stones.

• All these buildings work the same way: mice can climb up the leg, but not upside down past the overhanging cap.
• Tens of thousands of hórreos still stand in Galicia. The roof often has a cross at one end and a pinnacle at the other.
• The slits in the walls of a hórreo let the wind through, so maize and grain can dry.
• You can see old stabburs in open-air museums such as the Norsk Folkemuseum in Oslo and Maihaugen in Lillehammer.
• Loose staddle stones are now often used as ornaments in English gardens.

Cellars and wine cellars

Medieval merchants in towns such as Lübeck, Tallinn, Bruges and Deventer built their warehouses on vaulted cellars. Underground it stays about equally cool all year, and a stone vault carries the weight of the house and does not burn. Wine and beer mature best in such a cool, damp space. In the Champagne region bottles lie in old chalk pits deep underground.

• A barrel vault pushes sideways. That is why the walls below it are thick and several vaults lean against each other side by side.
• Heidelberg Castle holds the Great Tun from 1751, one of the largest wine barrels in the world.
• Cellars often had their own stairs or hatch from the street, so barrels did not have to be rolled through the house.

Arsenals and armouries

An arsenal or armoury is a store for weapons, cannon and ship's equipment. The Arsenal of Venice was a huge shipyard and weapons store in one during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. In Amsterdam the Admiralty built 's Lands Zeemagazijn in 1656, which now houses the National Maritime Museum. The Landeszeughaus in Graz still keeps thousands of suits of armour and weapons from the 17th century.

• Thousands of people worked in the Arsenal of Venice. It is said that they could finish a whole galley in a single day.
• Arsenals often had a splendid gate with statues and a pediment, to show how powerful the city was.

Salt warehouses

For centuries salt was very valuable, because you could preserve fish and meat with it. Salt from Lüneburg went along the Old Salt Route to Lübeck and from there across the Baltic Sea. On the river Trave in Lübeck the Salzspeicher still stand, a row of salt warehouse gables from the 16th to 18th centuries. In Regensburg the great Salzstadel from the early 17th century stands by the Stone Bridge.

• Salt draws in moisture and then turns hard and lumpy. A salt warehouse therefore had to be dry and well aired above all.
• A steep roof gave many extra attic floors on top of the building, with small hatches for the wind.