Tithe Barn, Hartpury Court

The tithe barn at Hartpury Court dates to the 15th century, with alterations in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was originally built for St. Peter's Abbey, Gloucester. The barn is constructed of coursed, squared stone with a tiled roof and stone ridges, featuring 11 bays and two porches on its south side.

The external buttresses are square, with original plinths and two offsets, some of which have been rebuilt with a single slope or a triangular shape. The barn has a gable facing the road, with corner and central buttresses. A pair of slit air vents are present. The main south-facing elevation is divided into three sections by the porches. Each section has slit air vents in the outer bays, a central elliptical-headed doorway with stone voussoirs and a projecting keystone, and a short slit air vent above. An internally sliding door is present. A square-headed window with stone voussoirs and a projecting keystone replaces one air vent on the left-hand side. The porch walls are the same height as the barn. Corner buttresses are diagonal, and the parapet gable has projecting kneelers and a decorative stone finial atop a cross-gablet. Door jambs are chamfered; the first porch has a pointed head with infilled boarded sections, including two openings for pigeons or owls and double boarded doors below. The second porch has an elliptical head (doors are missing). The main roof is tiled, with blue tiles forming a pattern on the south side only, and is plain on the north. The parapet gables display a heraldic animal on the apex. The back wall contains square-headed, low openings to the threshing floors, with the second one now walled up. Elliptical-headed small openings are located between the slit air vents in the second and third sections. A 19th-century brick-walled cow yard is situated on the south side, constructed in English bond with stone coping and corner piers, extending from the first porch to the west end. The east wall has been slightly raised in the mid-20th century.

Inside, the east porch opens onto a stone-paved threshing floor. To the left are two rows of cowtying areas extending the length of the barn, facing each other across a feeding passage which retains a tramway and waggon. A low brick wall with a bullnose top, a brick trough with a timber edge, original timber posts, and rough rails are also present – the latter representing an alteration. The right side features a higher wall with openings at regular intervals for feeding, some hooks for sliding shutters remain, and a trough. Remains of partitions that separated pairs of cows survive in most areas. The roof includes two original braced collar trusses on either side of the east threshing floor, with curved wind braces. A truss at the west end dates to 1981; the remainder are likely 18th century and of an unusual type with collars, kingposts, and braces extending under the feet of the principal rafters. There are three pairs of purlins. Collars clasp the principal rafters, thicker in the centre than at the ends to the west of the threshing floor. The barn was originally built as a tithe barn; the new roof trusses are probably 18th century and the barn was largely converted to a cow house in the mid-19th century when the patterned roof was applied and elliptical-headed small doors were cut. Cattle were kept on the north side for milking, on the south for fat stock, and the east end of the barn was used for threshing in 1919. The roof of the covered yard is not of specific interest.