Barn from Gungelshausen

Built: 1882
Dismantled: 1984
Reassembled: 1985 bis 1987

Gungelshausen is a part of the Northern Hesse municipality of Willingshausen in the Schwalm region, approximately 65 kilometres south of Kassel. This small hamlet consists today, and consisted at the time, of a very few farmsteads which presumably have been tilling almost the same fields since the Thirty Years War (1618 to 1648).

According to an inscription, the barn was built by Sebastian Riebeling in 1882. Apart from the front eaves side of the two-storey building, all walls and both gables were clad with wood shingles. In 1985, the barn was transferred to the Open Air Museum. In its original location, it had been part of a large and enclosed, four-sided farmstead, a type which was wide-spread in the Schwalm area. The family of the former owner were able to trace the history of this farmstead and managed to prove that a family farm of the Riebelings existed as far back as 1467.

In the museum, the stable is put to agricultural use again, partly for storage, partly to house livestock. The surrounding meadows, for example, serve as pasture for the Rhön sheep and the Coburg Fox sheep.