The Great Barn

The Great Barn is a tithe barn dating from the early 13th century, built for the Cistercian monks of Beaulieu Abbey, who owned the manor. It was restored in 1868, when many of the roof trusses and tie beams were either strengthened or replaced with deal beams, and again between 1960 and 1962 by the National Trust, which included re-roofing with stone slates on new rafters and replacing some timbers with oak beams. The barn is constructed of rubble stone with dressed stone buttresses and openings, featuring gabled stone tiled roofs with dressed stone copings and decayed stone finials at the gable ends. It has a cruciform plan measuring 152 feet 2 inches by 43 feet 10 inches, with a height of 48 feet to the ridge.

The exterior walls are supported by shallow buttresses that have set-offs and splays at their bases. Each transept features segmental-headed archways with two continuous chamfers. The tall entrances at the north and south gable ends were added in the 18th century. Inside, the barn has a seven-bay layout divided into a nave and aisles by massive roof-supporting trusses resting on 7-foot stone piers topped by oak templates. Heavy bracing struts extend from the trusses to support large tie beams, while additional tension braces spring from plain and carved corbels on the side walls to support the aisle tie beams. The east transept measures approximately 14 feet by 4 feet, while the west transept is three times larger and features a pointed-headed doorway with steps to the right of the entrance from the nave, which was originally the double-storied office of a monastic official. The barn has been dated to before 1250 by William Morris and to around 1230 by recent historians based on the stylistic similarity of the wall corbels to other dated examples, particularly those at Rievaulx Abbey.