Monastic Barn Of Titchfield Abbey At Fern Hill Farm

Monastic Barn of Titchfield Abbey at Fern Hill Farm

This is a medieval monastic timber-framed, aisled barn with a hipped tiled roof, approximately 50 metres long by 15 metres wide. The timbers have been dated by dendrochronology to spring 1407 and winter 1408/9. The barn was constructed of oak, limestone tile and brick.

Exterior

The east (front) side and north end are weatherboarded, while the west (rear) side and south end are built of limestone blocks. Two wagon entrances are set into the east side, opposed by two double-plank door entrances to the west. Ventilation slits and windows with brick dressings are located in the west wall. Cement buttresses have been added to the south wall. The wagon entrances have hipped tiled roofs with arched braces.

Interior

The barn's internal structure is composed of alternate major and minor roof trusses. The jowled arcade posts of the principal trusses have arched braces to the tie beams, while those of the intermediate trusses have jointed crucks to stub tie or false hammer beams. Purlins are clasped between principal rafters and under-rafters, with the under-rafters ending at collars. Short king post trusses with ridge braces rise from the collars to support the ridge. There are some arched wind braces throughout. This framing is quite unusual in its use of false hammer beams, under-rafters and short king-posts.

The east-facing wagon entrances have arched braces to the tie beams with queen struts above. The west-facing entrances are clearly later insertions, lacking the internal framing of the original openings. A free-standing twentieth-century shed within the barn is of no special architectural interest.

History and Context

The barn stands within the outer precinct of the former Premonstratensian abbey at Titchfield. The Premonstratensian order was founded in 1120 by St Norbert at Premontre, near Laon, France. Titchfield Abbey, formally called the Abbey of St Mary and St John the Evangelist, was founded in 1232 by Peter des Roches, Bishop of Winchester, and was the last of 33 Premonstratensian houses to be established in England. At its height, the abbey estate comprised 15 manors containing 60 villages with 500 tenants, 1000 acres of arable land and 1500 sheep.

In the early thirteenth century, the abbey estates employed the open field system of agriculture. By the later thirteenth and into the fourteenth century, however, much of the abbey's lands were enclosed and sheep rearing gradually replaced arable farming. The abbey barn, built to centralise grain storage, was not constructed until the early fifteenth century. The abbey was visited by Richard II and Henry V (on his way to the wars in France), while Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou celebrated part of their wedding at the abbey.

Following the suppression of Titchfield in 1537, part of the abbey was converted into a mansion known as Place House by Thomas Wriothesley, who had received it from King Henry VIII. Most of the house was demolished in 1781 by the Delme family (who had acquired it in 1742) to provide materials for a new house they built in Fareham. The barn, however, survives substantially intact, though with later alterations. Following the Dissolution, stone from the monastic buildings became available to replace wooden walling, and in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, brickwork was added. Dendrochronological analysis shows that the timbers of the north porch date to 1560-62. It appears that the wagon entrances were enlarged and rebuilt, probably when stone became available from the adjacent monastic buildings at the time of the Dissolution.

To the north of the barn and west of the abbey lies a series of five fishponds, which are scheduled together with the main remains of Titchfield Abbey. The abbey itself became subject to a Guardianship agreement in 1922.