FARMINGTON – Firefighters lit a fire at an old farmhouse and attached post-and-beam barn Monday morning on Routes 2 and 4.

Within 90 minutes, the buildings were burned flat, Farmington Fire Rescue Chief Terry Bell said. “We left a little after 2 a.m.” on Tuesday, Bell said.

The structures, which are adjacent to and owned by Franklin Memorial Hospital, have been used for the last two years as training sites for Firefighter I and II programs, Bell said.

The buildings had balloon-style frames, with no fire stops between floors, he said.

Eighteen firefighters from the department were at the site.

The department burns a building only if it can get training use out of it, Bell added.

“Everything went great; the weather was great,” Bell said. “I was very pleased last night. Excellent. I’d been fretting about it for two weeks.”

Bell said he was concerned that embers could catch another property on fire or that the trees would catch fire. But as far as he knew Tuesday, everything was OK.

The buildings were an eyesore and the hospital wanted to dress up that area, said Don Garrison, hospital chief of facility management. It was also a safety hazard, he said, so hospital officials decided to level everything. An excavator was working the site Tuesday morning.

The hospital owns 140 acres in the area, including property in Wilton and Farmington, Garrison said. There are no plans for the site as yet, he said.