Granary

This article is about granaries in general. For the Bristol granary, see Granary, Bristol. For the record label, see Granary Music.

A small granary (early 19th century), Slovenia

A granary, also known as a grain house and historically as a granarium in Latin, is a post-harvest storage building primarily for grains or seeds. Granaries are typically built above the ground to prevent spoilage and protect the stored grains or seeds from rodents, pests, floods, and adverse weather conditions. They also assist in drying the grains to prevent mold growth. Modern granaries may incorporate advanced ventilation and temperature control systems to preserve the quality of the stored grains.

Early origins

Grain storage chambers (ghorfas) of Ksar Hadada, southern Tunisia. Ksar Hadada is a fortified granary village that was built by North African Berber communities to store grain and crops

Golghar granary built in 1786, Patna, India

From ancient times grain has been stored in bulk. The oldest granaries yet found date back to 9500 BC and are located in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A settlements in the Jordan Valley. The first were located in places between other buildings. However beginning around 8500 BC, they were moved inside houses, and by 7500 BC storage occurred in special rooms. The first granaries measured 3 x 3 m on the outside and had suspended floors that protected the grain from rodents and insects and provided air circulation.

These granaries are followed by those in Mehrgarh in the Indus Valley from 6000 BC. The ancient Egyptians made a practice of preserving grain in years of plenty against years of scarcity. The climate of Egypt is very dry, grain could be stored in pits for a long time without discernible loss of quality.

Historically, a silo was a pit for storing grain. It is distinct from a granary, which is an above-ground structure.

East Asia

Simple storage granaries raised on four or more posts appeared in the Yangshao culture in China and after the onset of intensive agriculture in the Korean peninsula during the Mumun pottery period (c. 1000 B.C.) as well as in the Japanese archipelago during the Final Jōmon/Early Yayoi periods (c. 800 B.C.). In the archaeological vernacular of Northeast Asia, these features are lumped with those that may have also functioned as residences and together are called 'raised floor buildings'.

China built an elaborate system designed to minimize famine deaths. The system was destroyed in the Taiping Rebellion of the 1850s.

Southeast Asia

In vernacular architecture of Indonesian archipelago granaries are made of wood and bamboo materials and most of them are built and raised on four or more posts to avoid rodents and pests. Examples of Indonesian granaries styles are the Sundanese leuit and Minang rangkiang.

Great Britain

A granary sitting on staddle stones, at the Somerset Rural Life Museum

In the South Hams in southwest Great Britain, small granaries were built on mushroom-shaped stumps called staddle stones. They were built of timber-frame construction and often had slate roofs. Larger ones were similar to linhays but with the upper floor enclosed. Access to the first floor was usually via a stone staircase on the outside wall.

Towards the close of the 19th century, warehouses specially intended for holding grain began to multiply in Great Britain. There are climatic difficulties in the way of storing grain in Great Britain on a large scale, but these difficulties have been largely overcome.

Moisture control

Grain must be kept away from moisture for as long as possible to preserve it in good condition and prevent mold growth. Newly harvested grain brought into a granary tends to contain excess moisture, which encourages mold growth leading to fermentation and heating, both of which are undesirable and affect quality. Fermentation generally spoils grain and may cause chemical changes that create poisonous mycotoxins.

One traditional remedy is to spread the grain in thin layers on a floor, where it is turned to aerate it thoroughly. Once the grain is sufficiently dry it can be transferred to a granary for storage. Today, this can be done using a mechanical grain auger to move grain from one granary to another.

In modern silos, grain is typically force-aerated in situ or circulated through external grain drying equipment.

Modern

Modern grain farming operations often use manufactured steel granaries to store grain on-site until it can be trucked to major storage facilities in anticipation of shipping. The large mechanized facilities, particularly seen in Russia and North America are known as grain elevators.

Examples

• Ancient, Traditional, and Modern Granaries
• 
  Granary in Kashan, Iran
• 
  Han dynasty granary on Silk Road west of Dunhuang, China
• 
  Wooden granaries of the local museum in Iisalmi, Finland
• 
  A large granary in Bydgoszcz, Poland, on the Brda River
• 
  Chudów, Upper Silesia - manor granary, from the 18th century, brick construction (monument number A/569/66)
• 
  Multi-storey granary with portico, built in 1835, Kiszombor, Hungary
• 
  Granary in Verkhivnia, Ukraine, built in 1913
• 
  Former granary in Zürich, Switzerland, 1897
• 
  Meiji period granary, Setagaya, Tokyo, Japan
• 
  Two rangkiang in a photo c. 1895 of rice granaries in the Minangkabau architectural style in Batipuh in the Padang Plateau, Sumatra, Indonesia
• 
  The Port Perry, Ontario, Canada mill and grain elevator, granary, built in 1873 (photographed c. 1930)
• 
  Modern steel granaries in Iowa, U.S.
• 
  Grain House floor of Mildenstein Castle (built around 1395), Germany
• 
  Ancient Greek geometric art funeral gift box in the shape of granaries, 850 BC. On display in the Ancient Agora Museum in Athens, housed in the Stoa of Attalos
• 
  Granary model, Han dynasty. Stoneware model granary canisters as these were funeral gifts, buried with the deceased as a symbol of wealth and to provide food in the afterlife
• 
  Leuit, Sundanese traditional granary, in West Java, Indonesia
• 
  The Grain House (Kornhaus), building on the left, next to tram 9, located on Kornahusplatz in Bern, was a granary built between 1711 and 1715 (photo from 1983)

See also

• Hambar
• Hórreo
• Horreum
• Raccard
• Storage silo
• Corn crib
• Groote Schuur, the stately South African home was originally a granary.
• Rice barn
• Treppenspeicher
• Ghorfa
• Parish granary