Project History & Scope

Scope of Work

The circa 1830's Mayes Burton Barn at Hereford High School has suffered in recent decades due to the effects of weather and lack of funding to support maintenance and repairs.  Its original hand hewn beams and period construction techniques still exist but are in danger of being lost forever without stabilization and preservation.

Proposed Scope of Work:

Our goal is to complete a phased rehabilitation as funds are made available, managed by PABC and supervised by Baltimore County Public Schools, including:

Critical Phase 1 Activities:

• Replacing gutters, downspouts, to effectively control rain water.
• Structural beam and foundation repairs.

• Replacing the exterior siding.
• Window, door, and vent restoration.
• Period appropriate lighting upgrade.
• Exterior paint, stain.
• Historic study, interpretive display.

  

George Washington

Winston Churchill

MHT Historical Survey Information

The Hereford High School Barn is a middle-sized Pennsylvania bank barn or "hill side barn" or in Baltimore County parlance, a "pole barn," very close to York Road. It was described in the county paper as a hundred years old but is certainly the barn on the fully equipped Mays family farm offered for sale in 1892, certainly the barn inherited in 1888 from Thomas G. Mays by Thomas Clarence Mays. The barn is two stories of frame construction on a stone foundation. The second story is supported by post-bolster-and-girt construction, the same sort of massive framing used in water mills. The girts are somewhat primitive, hand-hewn timbers that are not cleanly cut sawmill products, not even straight. Some of the plates in the attic are crudely adzed beams, and the roof rafters are also hand-hewn lengths of half round trees app~rently morticed into the ridge pole. There are a number of heavy collars which serve as cross braces for the rafters. Overall dimensions are 40 by 50 feet. 

The barn probably dates from some period during the ownership of the Mays Family. John Mays appears as the buyer of four parcels in the "same as" clause of the 1892 deed.  He acquired his first portion in 1821 from William Merryman, another part in 1833 from Richard Sewell, and yet another in 1835 ffom Thomas Love.  A fourth parcel, only one acre, was acquired from John Rowe and wife in exchange for 100 bushels of lime.  Transfer Book No. 2 in the Hall of Records shows that a barn worth $300 was added to the seventh district tax account of Jphn P. Mays in 1859 (folio 8). The J. Mays house appears at this site on the east side of the York Road on J.C. Sidney's 1850 map. John Mays died in June 1868 according to his will.  The 1877 G.M. Hopkins atlas shows Thomas G. Mays as owner of the farm.

Inventory records show that Thomas G. Mays died about January 1888. His inventory totaled $588.39. The list of his possessors made by neighbors Joseph E. Tracey and John W. Knight showed all the usual wagons and livestock of a functioning farm, including hives of bees.  The barn was no doubt in place to shelter those assets. · At the 1892 auction, Edmund A. Burton was highest bidder for the farm on the east side of York Road, paying $2,536.05.  The deed reveals that the farm was composed of old land grants called Low's Range, Addition to Low's Range, Laurel Hills, and Merrymans Enclosure Rectified. The Burton family owned the place until 1950 when Herman C. and Isabella J. Burton sold their remaining 104.97 acres to the Board of Education of Baltimore County as a site for Hereford High School.

Dr. Harold Burton recalled in 1995 that "I spent my summers on the farm. I learned how to milk cows in that barn."  The farm was his grandfather's and was a "garden variety barn" as Dr. Burton remarked to the LPC staff in 1994.  When Hereford High School opened in 1953 the barn was used to house livestock for school's agricultural education program and each summer for the Hereford Junior Farm Fair. There was also a Kiddie Farm in the barn and elementary school students would be bussed in to see the animals.