Old stone barns are such an intrinsic part of the Yorkshire Dales landscape that we take them for granted.

Yet the majority are neglected – by the walkers and tourists who barely give them a second look and by the farmers who can't afford to maintain these reminders of our agricultural heritage.

There are an astounding 4,500 redundant historic barns, or laithes, in the dales, most of them built in the 17th and 18th centuries. Next time you go there start looking and you'll find it's like trying to count sheep. In Swaledale there's almost one in every field.

"A lot of them have fallen down and quite a lot of what is left is derelict, says Andy Singleton. "Can you imagine if there were that many decaying buildings of one type in a city or town? There'd be an outcry." Andy has converted about 30 Dales barns and is fascinated by their past and their future.

His passion for them is evident in a new book. It may sound a dry topic but not the way it's presented here. Andy's take on everything from planning officers to health and safety, along with practical tips, make it a page-turner.

His friend and former Dales-dweller, author Bill Bryson, who wrote the book's foreword, describes it as delightful and valuable.

Like Bryson, Andy also has broad horizons. He has tackled everything
from designing and building homes for Kosovans whose houses had been destroyed in the war (he jumped on his motorbike and headed for
Kosovo after seeing distressing news reports on TV), to working on set construction for TV dramas and renovating a tumbledown historic
house on the Knebworth estate in Hertfordshire.

"I saw an advert asking for someone to renovate a house on the estate and in return they'd get to live there for free for 20 years. I took it on in 2004 and it's been great because I had to start from scratch learning about timber frame and thatching. "

Andy, 47, is single because "women can't stand me for more than a couple of years." His father Fred was a Bradford University lecturer and a writer for the Dalesman. Andy first began working on Dales barns in the late 1970s with Hargraves, a Dales family building firm. "I was 16, I'd had enough of school and I wanted to earn money to buy motorbikes. Wilf Hargraves was a drinking pal of my father's and gave me a job.

"Building was a lot more fun before health and safety. I've always had a bent towards dangerous sports and that's what it was like. You learnt by instinct to keep yourself safe. We were strangers to scaffolding and if we made a mistake it hurt and we didn't make it again.

"It's remarkable how much things have changed, mostly for the best with bad backs, missing fingers and scars now less common. Yet I often think that we have lost something. We no longer possess the ability to create beautiful, everlasting structures using our bare hands and the sort of tools you would find in Fred Flintstone's back shed."

Youthful bravura saw him go it alone after a few years and he was soon in demand. His craftsmanship and creativity in finding solutions that would help retain the integrity of a barn while making it fit for habitation meant he was never short of work. He converted and renovated buildings on the Bolton Abbey estate, along with numerous others in Wharfedale.

"That's mine, that's mine and that's mine," he says as we drive around, adding that the one he most admires is the general store facility for the Bolton Abbey estate. He worked for the late Andrew Cavendish, Duke of Devonshire, and his wife Deborah in the 1980s.

"She is an incredible woman and was very involved in the construction
and interior design. She can engage tradesmen in detailed conversations about their work. While approaching her eighties she wasn't above sitting on the floor threading curtains onto hooks and mucking in when deadlines were slipping.

"They used whatever was available in the area when they built them, so in some places they are gritstone and sandstone, which is easier to work with and in other areas it's limestone, which is very brittle.

"With the limestone barns you can see the through stones sticking out and they hold the structure together. The roofs were of heather thatch or stone slates."

The walls are about two feet thick of solid stone, with a few stones filling the gap and perhaps some lime mortar. The flooring is flagstones or cobbles from the nearest beck. It means an average Dales barn weighs about 250 tons.

There isn't much Andy doesn't know about their construction, but his lack of business acumen led to him losing his own converted barn home in Burnsall. "I loved building and I've done a lot of work I am proud of, but I am the world's most rubbish businessman," he says.

"So I stopped a few years ago and it was time. I was getting older and it's physically demanding work. It means I have time for interesting projects like this book."

He and photographer Christopher Walker spent weeks travelling the Dales at dawn looking for interesting example to include in the book. The barns were built to provide shelter for animals and storage for hay, but mechanisation meant that they were mostly redundant by the 1940s.

More recently, the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority has helped to secure grants for farmers to repair the barns, but Andy says: "I feel sorry for the farmers because why should they be expected to spend money maintaining buildings they have no use for?

"Personally, I think planning rules should be relaxed and the National Park Authority should be more proactive. Rather than saying 'no' and taking an adversarial stance, they should be looking for alternative uses for the barns.

"More could be converted into homes or offices and workshops. You can see some by the sides of roads that would be perfect for conversion. Like that one," he says pointing one at the edge of a car park at Embsay.

"People have a knee-jerk reaction to that suggestion, but it's better than having a mouldy old relic falling down."

Barn conversion is challenging. Few have foundations and so need underpinning. One false move and the whole lot can collapse. They are often damp and they may also have bats, which means dealing with the Department for Food and Rural Affairs. "Defra won't deal with you direct if there are bats in the barn. So you have to hire a bat consultant and that gives them the licence to take money off you."

He says: "I worked with some superb architects, but others get away with murder. They don't know how things stay up or how they work and if they draw something you can't build, they draw it again and charge the client again. Mostly when they design something that doesn't work, the builder solves the problem.

"They get away with it because of the English person's deference to a man in a suit driving a big German car."

"I've seen some terrible conversions – ones where they've added stones that have been cut with a saw which don't look right. And I hate ones that are all plastered inside and look too modern. If that's the look you want, you've got the wrong building.

"I also hate the ones that are too rustic and look like those fake pubs. There's a happy medium, but I think you need to expose some of the old structure. You can't meet the insulation requirements if you expose all the stone and it's hard to prove that two feet thick stone will hold the heat in. But you can leave areas of it showing while plaster boarding and insulating the rest."

His last barn job was for a friend, converting a derelict barn next to her home at East House Farm in Beckermonds into a holiday let.

"That was on the point of collapse and we needed to rebuild 90 per cent of it. It was a massive structural undertaking, but then a lot of barns are. It's a good example of rescuing a useless building that would otherwise have fallen down."

Andy's latest project is researching a book about the Victorian novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton, a member of the family that owns the Knebworth estate. "He used to use my house at Knebworth as a retreat and somewhere to write. I love it, but I come back up to the Dales a lot and I appreciate them more than I ever did when I was living and working here full time."

He reckons the landscape looks much better than when he started out. "It's a shame you can't buy a house in the Dales if you're an ordinary guy. But the money that has come in from wealthy commuters means that the buildings are in a lot better condition.

"Maybe that's another solution. We could convert some of the barns into affordable homes for people who work in the Dales."

Barns of the Yorkshire Dales (History, Preservation and Grand Designs) by Andy Singleton and David Joy, published by Great Northern Books, £16.99. To order from the Yorkshire Post Bookshop, call free on 0800 0153232 or go online at www.yorkshirepostbookshop.co.uk. Postage and packing is £2.75.

Words of wisdom built on years of experience

ANDY'S ANECDOTES, ADVICE AND OPINIONS:

On working for Wilf Hargraves in the Dales in the 1970s (Wilf used to whittle his own roofing pegs). "An architect once challenged his use of homemade pegs and our miniature creosote bath in a paint tin – our method of timber treatment. "I thought I specified pressure-treated tanalised timber?" he said. Wilf replied "We are pressing on a bit with the brush".



On barns that have been repaired with grant aid: "Without being a misery guts, I can't help pointing out that while it is wonderful that this work has been done, it doesn't address their long-term future. Should our generation admire them and marvel at this unique place in the landscape, until they fall into disrepair again and then wait for another hand out?"



On installing toilets and septic tanks in outlying cottages on the Bolton Abbey estate in 1978: "When she was caught short in the night one old lady had to cross the lethal A59 Harrogate Road and pick her way through the traffic on a blind bend so she could go behind a barn to an earth closet. She told me years later that she would still, when the need was urgent, put her togs on and make the journey to the earth closet before she remembered that she had indoor facilities."



On why barns are eco-friendly: "These stone buildings were built with natural materials using no machinery and very little fuel except for human energy. The best thing is that they are completely recyclable. I can think of no part of a Dales barn from the roof slates to the cow muck on the floor, which cannot be re-used."



If you buy a barn next to a Dales farmer, Andy advises: "This will not be a yokel who you can get the better of with your fancy southern ways.

"No. This man will have negotiating skills a Seventies union leader would admire, an eye for opportunity that would make Richard Branson jealous and a way with figures that would shame the US Federal Reserve. If you need to buy some land from the farmer for access, or perhaps a septic tank, you will have to negotiate, and unless you are careful you are toast. Mess with him at your peril. His wife will be even more formidable."



On architects: "Architects are people who have great artistic and spatial vision, a great knowledge of construction methods, planning
and building rules and many other attributes that make them very special. These include the ability to blame all that goes wrong on helpless contractors and take credit for everything that goes right.

"This is why they need a nice warm office, a large German car, lots of holidays and all your money."



A tip for would-be barn convertors: "Don't ever live in a caravan on site unless you are doing the work yourself. No, don't even do it then, particularly if you have small children.

"You will become depressed, fall out with your builder, walk around looking like a refugee and get divorced as soon as the project is completed and you can sell the building."



On health and safety rules: "We are entering a bizarre period in
history where personal responsibility is being replaced by health and safety nonsense. It is just no fun anymore.

"How far are we to go with all this before we realise that it has more
to do with insurance company profits and jobs for people who
wear beige and go on caravanning holidays?"



And finally… "How did we arrive at the point where any Simpkins who knows his way round a computer can earn three or four times more
than a man who can build something that will stand for hundreds of
years? I don't know the answer and that's probably one of the reasons I
am skint."