Great Barn, Attached Two-Bay Agricultural Building And Southern And Eastern Boundary Walls At Ashbury Manor

Great Barn, Attached Two-Bay Agricultural Building and Southern and Eastern Boundary Walls at Ashbury Manor

This is a large aisled barn, probably late-medieval in date and contemporary with Ashbury Manor House, which was built around 1488 as lodgings for Glastonbury Abbey. The barn was substantially altered probably in the mid to later 17th century, in the late 18th or early to mid 19th century, and again towards the end of the 19th century.

The barn is constructed with an oak timber frame and roof structure, supplemented by later 19th-century softwood strengthening and replacement. The bases to the aisle posts are of Taynton stone, though the outer walls formerly had sarsen bases. The outer plinth walls and gable walls are built in brick and brick with clunch. The external stud walls are weatherboarded, with the south-west gable and north-west elevation replaced in 2008. The roof is covered in plaintile, probably replacing earlier thatch.

The barn is an aisled structure of four-and-a-half bays, reduced from at least five bays originally, and is aligned south-west to north-east. The north-east gable wall was built mid-bay, curtailing the north-east end of the barn. The south-west gable wall was rebuilt probably in the later 17th or 18th century but appears to occupy its original position. The barn has two pairs of opposing doors. The earliest pair are now off-centre, whereas barn entrances are normally symmetrically placed. The main entrance on the south-east elevation features a half-hipped cart porch. A second pair of later entrances to the east of the original cuts through the wall plate and has a sloping porch on the south-east elevation. Smaller doorways on the long elevations were inserted in the later 19th century when the barn was used for livestock. Later 19th-century internal lofts survive, particularly at the south-west corner. The barn has a half-hipped 'Berkshire' roof with a shallow hip at the south-west gable. When the barn was reduced, the roof was rebuilt at the north-east end with a deeper hip.

Externally, the barn has brick and clunch plinth walls, repaired in the early 21st century on the northern elevation. These probably replaced sarsen plinths, of which some remain at the base of the brick and clunch south-west gable wall. Above the plinths are weatherboarded studding walls, replaced on the south-west and north-west walls and blocking former entrances on the north-west wall. The north-east gable wall is of clunch. The south-east wall is part brick and part clunch with brick, containing two cart entrances and a surviving vertical brick vent to the east of them. The lower cart entrance has weatherboarded cheeks and a half-hipped tiled-roofed porch set above the wall plate. The taller, later cart entrance to the east is flush with the outer wall, rises above the wall plate under a sloping tiled canopy, and is supported on brick piers, one of which has been rebuilt.

Internally, the aisle posts rest on horizontally laid timber pads on tall Taynton stone piers, except for the north-eastern pier which was rebuilt in brick, possibly as early as the 17th century. The internal structure is reinforced in an unusual manner. Aisle posts are connected to the longitudinal sill beams, which rest on the outer plinth walls, by horizontal timber plates set on transverse brick plinth walls, probably of late 17th or 18th-century date, which divide the aisles into bays. Most aisle posts are strengthened by 'passing shores' running from these plates. Later softwood longitudinal and transverse braces have been nailed to the frame. The roof is of queen strut construction with wind braces in the south-west bays, which in places cross the principal rafters. Like the frame, the roof is strengthened with tiers of softwood purlins, braces, and some replacement collars, and all common rafters are replaced in softwood. The remains of softwood lofts survive in the south-west angle of the barn. Concrete floors laid to accommodate livestock probably lie over rather than disturb earlier floor surfaces which potentially hold valuable archaeological evidence that may determine the development of the barn and associated structures.

Attached to the north-east end of the barn is a two-bay agricultural building probably dating from the second quarter of the 19th century and used as a calf house. It is of high quality craftsmanship for the period. The north-west wall and north-east gable wall are of brick. The south-east lateral wall is timber-framed and weatherboarded and, like the roof, is of elm. It has two unglazed windows with horizontal sliding shutters. The central truss has chamfered arch braces. The shared gable wall and potential evidence beneath the floor of the building are significant in understanding the development of the Great Barn.

The southern boundary wall fronting the lane is of mixed build, mainly of sarsen and clunch, and contains within it a pier or buttress of dressed stone. It has been suggested that this may be part of the original entrance to the late 15th-century lodgings. The wall continues to form the eastern boundary of the site and is again of mixed fabric and dates.

Ashbury Manor was built around 1488 by Abbott Selwood (1457-93) of Glastonbury Abbey as a lodging place for students travelling to Gloucester College, Oxford and for the Abbott travelling on the Somerset to London road. The barn is of local tradition and compares with Great Coxwell barn (Grade I) and Letcombe Bassett rectorial barn (Grade II). Carpenters' marks suggest that the barn is reduced in length and that it was raised a truss at a time with the aisles built second.

The original form of the barn and subsequent alterations reflect changes in the agricultural economy. It was built as a threshing barn in a tradition which changed little from the medieval to post-medieval periods. The reduction of the building, probably of mid-17th to early 18th-century date, may coincide with the occupancy of Thomas White, whose initials and date 1697 are inscribed above the door of the Manor House. Early to mid 19th-century investment in the barn may be associated with the arrival of the Great Western Railway and the markets this opened up. The agricultural depression of the 1870s saw changes in agricultural practice from corn production to livestock.