The Tithe Barn

The Tithe Barn

This is a house, formerly a barn, thought to have been the great barn attached to Burnham Abbey. It is probably early 16th century in date and may therefore predate the Dissolution of Burnham Abbey in 1536, though some components may be earlier. The building appears to be a single construction that was converted into a house in 1922.

The barn is a five-bay aisled timber-framed structure, approximately 30 feet by 80 feet, with a central wagon entrance aligned north-south. It has one storey and an attic, with gable ends and colourwashed cement infilling. The roof is of old tile, gabled, but was originally half-hipped. The west elevation has three modern dormers in the roof, and the ground floor features a central gabled entrance that has been altered to form a porch. Windows comprise three 3-light casements on the left-hand side and two one-light and two 2-light casements on the right-hand side, all modern casements with diamond-shaped leaded lights.

Structurally, the cross frames employ normal assembly at the eaves of the aisles and at the level of the arcade plates, with the gable cross frames including a mid-rail between the arcade posts and tie beams, plus passing braces between the aisle wall posts and tie beams that pass across the face of the arcade posts. The arcade plates have side-halved scarf joints with four face pegs, including a bridle tenon with two side pegs to the upper halving only; the lower halving has a simple vertical butt joint. The roof is of clasped purlin type with diminished principal rafters and raking queen strut trusses. Curved windbraces run between the roof trusses and the purlins. Common rafters are pegged through to the purlins and halved together at the apex. The principal rafters are numbered from north to south according to scribed carpenter's marks on their inner faces. The purlins have bridle-tenon scarf joints with two side pegs.

Of particular architectural interest is the deliberate mixed use of oak and elm in the construction. Elm was used for all the heavier members of the timber frame—the arcade posts, plates, braces, tiebeams and principal rafters—while oak was reserved for the lighter members, including the common rafters, passing braces and wall framing members. There is little evidence of the general use of elm in structural carpentry in England before the end of the 16th century, and the structural techniques suggest the barn was built around the beginning of the 16th century. A tree-ring analysis was carried out by the English Heritage Ancient Monuments Laboratory in 1997, but only a few oak samples with short ring sequences could be obtained, and cross-matching with chronologies for this part of England has not yet been possible.