The Tithe Barn at Rectory Farm, Thriplow

The Tithe Barn at Rectory Farm, Thriplow

This is an aisled barn thought to have been built as a tithe barn for the Bishop of Ely in the 14th century, with alterations carried out in the late 19th or early 20th century.

The barn is timber-framed, set upon low clunch side walls, though some areas have been replaced with weatherboarded stud work on low brick plinths. The roof is covered with corrugated metal sheeting, which replaced the earlier thatch.

The building is linear in plan, aligned east-west along the southern boundary of the farmyard, and is of double aisle form. It consists of seven bays. The principal entrance is a double doorway on the north wall in the central bay, fitted with double-ledged and braced boarded doors. Low aisle side walls extend on both sides of this main entrance, with the pitch of their metal-sheet roof coverings possibly reflecting the line of the original or earlier roof slope before the upper part of the roof structure was replaced. A single door opens to the west side of the main entrance, and sections of low brick plinth are visible. The east gable wall is largely plastered, with an inserted double doorway to the south side and weatherboarding to the gable apex above a narrow band of glazed stud work. The west gable is similarly covered with a mixture of wide weatherboarding and plastered stud work, with an inserted doorway to the centre, enclosed within a lower attached outbuilding (which does not form part of this assessment). The rear, or south, elevation has a single small off-centre window opening.

The interior is a single undivided space, and the building's timber frame is largely intact and clearly legible. The frame is formed around two arcades of substantial aisle posts, each arcade supporting an arcade plate. These plates, some formed with splayed scarf joints, extend the full length of the barn interior. The aisle posts support longitudinal and transverse braces which extend upwards to meet the aisle plates and the tie beams of the aisle trusses respectively. Some braces are curved, others straight; the original members are pegged, whilst some later replacements are face-nailed. Empty mortices indicate the location of missing braces. In most bays, the aisle posts are connected to the aisle walls by short horizontal beams, though a number of aisle bays are now separated by low walls. Evidence of incremental repair and adaptation is visible throughout the interior, including what appear to be a number of replacement aisle posts which lack the jowelled heads of the original frame members. A number of the original aisle posts have narrow diagonal trenches on one side face, possibly suggesting the presence of passing braces as part of an earlier roof structure, or indicating the use of re-used timber. Sections of the building's aisle roofs retain early rafters and riven laths, but the roof pitch above tie-beam level has been lowered, and the upper section of the roof trusses has been replaced by slender iron truss members.