Getting started

To browse BARD simply click on the “Enter BARD” link at the bottom of the left hand menu. You will need to enter the username: “Freeaccess” and PW: “cruck1066” to gain free access.

On entering BARD you will see the search screen (pictured below). Then enter the search criteria that you are interested in and then click the Search for Building(s) in the green text at the top or bottom of the screen.

For example, to find out how many buildings there are with the name “Old Cottage” just type “Old Cottage” under Building Name and then search. If you just use the words “Cottage”, or even part of a word such as “Cott” a lot more entries are listed.

If you then search for “Old Cottage” again, but this time also select a county under the County criteria you will find the buildings with this name are located in the selected county. You can then further refine your results through the other search fields such as Nature of Original Buildings and you can select anything from Dove Cote’s to Inn/Pubs (particularly useful).

Currently you will find few photos of buildings, but if you search under the search criteria Date Type Code, and select Dendro (DEN), this shows more buildings with photos.

Probably one of the most useful searches is the Key Features field into which you can type things like “Wealden”, “Queen post”, “Crucks” and many other types of building and stylistic features. If you are unsure of the term for the feature you are interested in refer to the illustrated glossary. However, please note that this will ONLY bring up buildings with those particular features, where the key features field has been completed on the tick-box sheet.

If it’s your first time searching BARD then to really see its potential we recommend sticking with Date Type Code with “Dendro (DEN)” selected, but then changing the Select Sort Order (under the second green bar on the screen) to Likely Construction Year. This provides a list showing a visual summary of the changes in building style through time. Finally, to see a summary of the structural changes that the tick-sheets record use the Display Results As (under the final green bar on the screen) and select Key Feature Report. A useful tip to take you back to the main search screen after each search is to use the “Back button” on your web browsers.

If you click on the building names in any of the lists (which are in lime-green text) you will be taken to the tick sheet on that particular building. Any of the individual tick-sheets or lists should print as seen on the screen, so long as you are using more recent versions of the main browsers.

One final note under General Period the post 1700 includes those buildings for which no dates have been yet estimated.