The Bishop's Barn is a Grade I listed building in the Somerset local planning authority area, England. First listed on 12 November 1953. A Medieval Barn.

The Bishop's Barn

WRENN ID
silent-footing-pearl
Grade
I
Local Planning Authority
Somerset
Constituency
Wells and Mendip Hills MP: Tessa Munt (LD)
Country
England
Date first listed
12 November 1953
Type
Barn
Period
Medieval
Address
The Bishop's Barn, Silver Street, Wells
OS grid reference
ST 550 455
Coordinates
51.20721, -2.64425
Source
Historic England listing

Also on this page: flood risk · radon risk · weather exposure · detailed attributes ↓

Description

The Bishop's Barn is a 15th-century barn that has been converted into an assembly hall. It is constructed from local stone that is roughly squared, with dressings made of Doulting ashlar, and features a Westmorland slate roof set between coped gables and a shaped stone ridge. The eaves have a corbelled course.

The exterior is single-storey with 13 bays, where the central threshing bay on each side is wider and includes projecting gabled porches. There are almost full-height buttresses with two offsets at the corners and between the bays, as well as added buttresses at the centers of the end gable walls, which have three offsets. Each bay contains a thin slit window with transoms, and similar windows are set high in the gables, with a central square window above each central buttress. The square window on the east side features quatrefoil tracery, and there is a later door inserted in the southeast corner. The porches have elliptical double-chamfer arches with labels and boarded doors. The north gables include a moulded recess with a quatrefoil vent in the upper half, while the south gable has only a slim window above the door. In bay 2 on the south side, there is a small section of a window, along with the jamb of a former door or window above.

Inside, the roof is supported by double-collar trusses that have stop-chamfered tie beams and one tier of curved windbraces in each bay, along with two tiers of tenoned and chamfered purlins.

Local climate

The Bishop's Barn receives an average of 860 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 62% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 70% of listed buildings.

It experiences an average of 34 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 52% of listed buildings. Of these, 14 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.

Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.

More on this building

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