Granary Approximately 30 Metres South South East Of Number 59 (Not Included)

WITNEY WOOD GREEN SP3610 (East side) 6/265 Granary approx. 30m. SSE of No.59 (not included) GV II

Granary of probably mid-late C18 date.

MATERIALS: Light timber frame with red brick infill, stone tile roof, limestone staddle stones.

PLAN: Rectangular, two-bay.

EXTERIOR: Two-bay lightly box-framed building with red brick infill to panels. Some of the panels are probably original, others, especially on the N gable wall, were renewed in the C19. Half-hipped roof covered with local stone tiles. Planked door in centre of west side looking into yard approached by open wooden steps (steps of c.2000, not of interest). Small shuttered windows in south and east walls. Stands on limestone staddle stones: three to each end and three to the sides plus one beneath the centre of the building. Staddles have rectangular-section uprights with chamfered edges.

INTERIOR: Roof with heavy truss with principal rafters linked by tie beam over door. Boarded floor. Walls with boarding surviving in places up to near wall plate level. Sections of boarded grain bins survive in the north half of the granary, one with 'S.S 1862' painted on one side.

HISTORY: Although as far as is known the particular date and circumstances of the granary's construction are unknown it was presumably built in the C18, like so many in the southern midlands, as farmers concentrated on the cultivation of grain crops in an era of enclosure and rising prices. Its presence suggests very much that the house on the street frontage to which it was then an appurtenance (what is now 61 Woodgreen Hill) was then a working farmhouse on the north-east fringe of Witney, a place best known for its blanket and textile industries. Ordnance Survey mapping of 1876 shows that the granary then stood against the east boundary wall of a fairly generously sized rear yard. By the early C20, and probably in 1912 when 59 Wood Green was built (datestone), this yard had been longitudinally divided between what are now numbers 59 and 61 Woodgreen Hill, leaving the granary in what was now a rather narrow plot. This remains its setting today.

SUMMARY OF IMPORTANCE: This is a small, probably mid-late C18, granary set in the yard of what was probably then a modest farmhouse on the edge of Witney. It is a two-bay structure built of local materials - a light timber frame with red brick infill, a stone tile roof and limestone staddle stones. Internally it retains some of its wall boarding and grain bins. It has seen little in the way of alteration, and altogether is a very good example of a farm building of specialist function but vernacular character.

Listing NGR: SP3607010414