Fred Brookes (2009):

"The land had belonged to the Ambleside Black Powder Works, and was not rough land. The storage areas were built with raised banks between then in case of explosions, and the Merzbarn was built on the foundations of one of these storage buildings, which had been razed to the ground when the gunpowder business closed in the 1930s, for safety reasons.

The Merzbarn was erected on the old foundations during the war from
(I think) the demolished stone of the former buildings. It is worth remembering that when Schwitters took it, it was quite a new building, only a few years old.

The source of the stone is quite important. It looks as if it has originally been fieldstone, not quarried stone. It is not cut, but in the form of natural stones and boulders which would have been on the land originally.

The significance of this for the Merzbarn is the nature of the gaps and crevices in which the foundations of the work are wedged. Had it been built of cut stone, the availability of this underlying architecture would have been quite different."