The harness-room, at the end of the stables, was the first target of the animals' liberation after the Rebellion. They broke it open and flung down the well the bits, nose-rings, dog-chains, and the cruel knives used for castrating pigs and lambs. The reins, halters, blinkers, degrading nosebags, and whips were thrown onto a rubbish fire burning in the yard; the animals capered with joy as the whips went up in flames. This destruction was a ceremonial purging of the instruments of human tyranny, an act that defined the new order by its rejection of the old.

Almost immediately, the pigs repurposed the harness-room as their own headquarters. They set it aside for themselves and studied there in the evenings, learning blacksmithing, carpentering, and other arts from books brought out of the farmhouse. It was also in the harness-room that Snowball found an old green tablecloth of Mrs. Jones's, which he painted with a hoof and horn in white. This was run up the flagstaff every Sunday morning as the flag of the future Republic of the Animals, symbolizing the green fields of England and the coming triumph over the human race.

The harness-room became a locus of power and privilege. Napoleon took the nine puppies, as soon as they were weaned, into a loft that could be reached only by a ladder from the harness-room, keeping them in such seclusion that the rest of the farm soon forgot their existence. There he raised them into his fierce guard dogs. Furthermore, the order went forth that all windfall apples from the orchard were to be collected and brought to the harness-room for the exclusive use of the pigs. Squealer was sent to explain that this sacrifice was necessary to preserve the pigs' health, for the entire management of the farm depended on them. Thus the harness-room, once a store of human tyranny, became the nerve center of the pigs' emerging dictatorship and the physical site where the revolution's ideals of equality began to be undermined.