I feel like we're going off topic, ha ha! Here in New England, the farmer family would have lived up on the 2nd floor. The kids. Also in the 'ell' over the kitchen, where that other chimney is. There are 2 closed off thimbles for wood stoves, and it does have the pine board flooring (original 1860). It was a dairy farm after the US Civil War. The stairs up are original, too. It goes from 3 feet (1 meter, ha ha) at the knee wall, but in the center of the space it was about 16 feet to the peak.
This is post and beam, no cross braces since they weren't doing things that way yet (until I built in the new ceiling, of course, which is like a deck of 2x6 above one's head). One set of huge hemlock rafters every 8 feet or so. They had pasted pages from the old Sears catalog on the inside of the wall sheathing to try to keep out drafts. Sorry lot they must have been! But that did save a lot of history, and we found tons and tons of period things from wooden starch box tops to business cards, lanterns, hats, hairbrushes, marbles, buttons, letters.....I found an old brassiere too, but my wife wanted no part of trying to save it, LOL...
Yup, in my 'avatar', above the windows you can see a decorative star, and a square vent above that. You can walk around up there (7' in center down to nothing at edges), but I still wanted ventilation. I had to staple furnace filter over the inside of the vent so the very high winds here won't move my insulation all the way to the other end, ha ha!!
It might be ok to tie your house down, Phil, if you have worries. I'm not concerned, but Maine is pretty geologically stable. If the wind hasn't taken it YET, I don't think it will.
Look at that poor oak tree, how it has bowed! It's well over 100 yrs old. So's the maple to its left, I have a photo of it from 1895. Very humble home, but very historical and in a great area as far as privacy, cost of living, way of life, really experiencing nature and so on. This is abundant, fecund place, but you can see that winter is extremely harsh and unforgiving...that is awesome
Not a great pic, but this is where we started, a week after moving in 2 yrs ago. just to show how fertile it is in the summer time. Big difference now that the old AC siding is gone, roof painted, windows redone, etc!!