This lovely timber framed threshing barn built in around 1610 always fascinates me when I visit Hodnet Hall Gardens.
BuildingHistory.org on the history of barns:
Often the dominating farm building is the barn, the storehouse for the grain crop. It can be recognised by its great doors – two opposite each other large enough for a fully-laden wagon to pass through. In between the doors lies the threshing floor, taking advantage of the through draft. The largest barns have two threshing floors with two sets of doors.
Since the lowlands provide much good arable land, while the highlands are generally better suited to pastoral farming, the biggest barns in Britain can be found in Southern and Eastern England. Medieval barns tend to be called tithe barns. Some barns were indeed built to house the tithes due to the local rector, but in other cases the label is misleading. Some of the most impressive medieval barns were built by monastic houses or bishops on manors that they owned; they would have housed the crop from the lord’s demesne.
Grain storage could be combined with other farm uses, such as housing livestock. Cattle could be sheltered in end bays or aisles of single-storey barns, or on the ground floor of a split-level, dual-purpose building (a chall barn in Cornwall). These include the bank barns found in England mainly in the Lake District and parts of Cornwall, Devon and Somerset. In the South-West they were introduced in the late 18th century, but mainly date from the mid-19th century. Bank barns are built into a slope, so that both floors can be entered at ground level. The lower floor provided a byre, perhaps combined with stable and cart shed. Above was the barn.
Parishioners gave a tenth of their yearly produce (tithes, or in Scotland teinds) to their church, a system which generated a range of records over the centuries, from national surveys of clerical wealth to parochial glebe terriers and tithe maps.
Many pious medieval patrons chose to grant their church to a monastic house, particularly in the 12th century, when there was a surge of disapproval of churches in private hands. The monastery thereby became the official rector, appointing a vicar (clerical deputy) to carry out parochial duties. A monastery as rector would generally collect the ‘greater tithes’ (those of grain) for its own use, while the vicar had the ‘lesser tithes’ of other produce. After the Dissolution, the rectories and advowsons formerly held by monastic houses were sold, so that there were many lay rectors thereafter. A rectory could include land originally granted to the church (glebe land), as well as tithes.
In Scotland teinds were abolished at the Reformation; in Ireland tithes were abolished in 1869; in England and Wales the process was more drawn out. The Tithe Commutation Act of 1836 substituted a rent for the payment of tithes in kind; it spawned the tithe maps and awards in the late 1830s. The rent charges were abolished in 1936 and replaced by an annuity payable to the State until 1996.
