How To Spot a Tithe Barn

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I'm Matt Lewis, and this is another of my selfish episodes. Because just when I feel like I understand most things about the medieval world and life during that period, someone drops a book or a piece of research or a casual comment that makes me frown and throw my hands up.

because there's always so much more to learn. So when Joseph Rogers' book Tithe Barns was nearing publication, I thought that's something I, and hopefully you, would like to know a little bit more about. Tithe Barns can be seen dotted through the English landscape to this day, but what are they?

Why were they put there? Joe's kindly agreed to share some of his insights and expertise with us today. So thanks very much for joining us, Joe. I mean, let's just get the ball rolling with the simple question. What is a tithe barn? Great question, and it's a question I'm sure a lot of people would like answered. To answer that question, really you have to answer, first of all, what are tithes?

Tides are a religious payment of tax, so they originated first references in the Old Testament, Deuteronomy chapter 14 verses 22 to 29 says something along the lines of bring all the tides of that year's produce and store them in your towns. So subsistence farmers and the public were asked to do was to take a tenth of the produce that they'd farmed during that year.

and gather that tenth up and take it to a single community venue in their town or perhaps located near a ecclesiastical property like an abbey or a monastery and that's where they would store it and that would be their tax payment or their offering to God. That's what a tithe is, and a tithe barn is a barn that was used to store those tithes.

So putting it very simply, it was kind of like a tax repository, if you like, in the very early days of taxation, when it was all based around the structure of the church and the ecclesiastical authorities of the time. So a little bit like Fort Knox, but for grain.

Yeah, basically, yeah. And there was a wide array of produce that was tithed over the years and over the centuries. You had things like great tithes, which were corn, wheat, barley, and of course their big bulk... produce so they're going to need a lot of space to store but you also have things like vegetables and in certain parts of the of the world in Europe in particular you have things like fish and honey that were tithed as well over over many centuries so in a very short phrase a tithe

barn is a barn that was used to store tithes, which were these one-tenth of a farmer's produce tax payments. Fantastic. I did hear a very interesting conversation a while ago about eels being used to pay rents and tithes and all sorts of things, a slippery way to pay your tithes. So when did Tithe Bonds kind of begin to appear?

in England? When do we know that they were being built? A lot of sources say that St Augustine of Canterbury was the person that introduced tides into England in around the 10th century. Tide barns in particular started to come about in northern Europe, France, Belgium, in Germany. Germany and then later into England in around the 10th century.

there aren't many and in fact I don't think there are any examples from that early that actually still exist but that's certainly when the record suggests that these buildings were built to store these tides because the structure of that tax. that tax payment, the tithe payment, that's when that started to come about. So 10th century, you can pinpoint really to there as to when they actually started to be built. It was a process, a system, if you like, that grew.

along with some of the establishments that were established around that time between the 10th and 12th centuries. So the big abbeys and monasteries like Glastonbury and Abbotsbury, Shaftesbury, Bewley. As soon as they started to grow, the tide system spread. And it's from that...

time that really the tithe barn as a known entity sort of began really. So we can see it expanding alongside the kind of explosion in ecclesiastical life in England as monasteries spread everywhere. Tithe barns obviously grew up alongside them.

The appearance of tide barns very much grew with that influence in Christianity across the UK really, and that's why you see less in places like Scotland, because the influence of Christianity really didn't make it that far into the Highlands. The spread of tide barns can be correlated really.

with the spread of, as you say, the influence of Christianity and where these abeys and monasteries cropped up. Do we tend to see more of them in the south, the southeast of England, or are they fairly well spread? As you say, they didn't quite reach Scotland, but are they geographically otherwise fairly widespread?

There are tithe barns or there were tithe barns in pretty much every part of England at one stage or another and even today there are tithe barns that still exist or perhaps ruins or records of tithe barns that existed in pretty much every part of England in particular.

But you're right, the south is where the kind of hotspots are. So the West Country in particular, Somerset, Dorset, Gloucestershire, the Cotswolds, that's where the real hotspot is for tithe barns. And that's because of things like, you know, St Peter's Abbey in Gloucester. Glastonbury Abbey, Cern Abbey and Dorset. You've also got pockets of where

you find other sort of collections of medieval barns, if you like. So Kent, there's loads of medieval wooden barns that were based around Canterbury, for example. There's a lot around there. East Angliad actually has quite a few.

and Lancashire as well and in fact not so much present tide barns in terms of one that still exists but there are records of lots of tithe barns in some of the villages and towns in what we now know as Lancashire so again in a nutshell they're pretty much everywhere but the south as you say and you quite rightly point as the place where there is a significant collection still that still remain really

And it sounds like even stretching into Lancashire, they're kind of following the wealth. So the richest places are in Canterbury. Lancaster becomes quite a wealthy area. particularly with the Dukes of Lancaster and things like that, which I guess is not the same as an ecclesiastical wealth, but it kind of goes hand in hand sometimes, doesn't it? So it sounds like they kind of follow where the money is, where the richest abbeys and monasteries are.

you'll generally find a good tithe barn that's maybe survived. Yeah, and actually in some cases, you know, there's some quite convincing evidence to suggest that, you know, like the sort of grand buildings that you get associated with abeys and monasteries, the tithe barns were something that were used to express that way. in particular Coggeshall Abbey which is in Essex I think they built their medieval barn

which was used to store tides. It was actually an outlying grange from sort of separated from the village, but they built that as a tithe barn and they tried to build it as big and impressive as they could to try and express their wealth. And that's something that can be seen in a lot of the stone barns. like the Cotswolds and Somerset as well, these buildings were given as much attention to

from an architectural point of view, and some of the people that were employed to build them, the craftsmen, some of them were even, you know, sort of brought across from some of the large abbeys in France, you know, because the craftsmen skills were deemed to be, you know, higher quality in some respects. But, you know, they were an...

of wealth themselves and some of the carvings and that you find on some some of the Glastonbury Abbey barns for example have some quite interesting carvings they were built in the same way in many ways in terms of advertising their stature in the local area as the abbeys and the monasteries themselves. So yeah, to say that they followed the wealth I don't think would be any false thing to say at all.

I suppose building a posh looking tithe barn is a little bit like rubbing everyone's nose in it, isn't it? Come and pay your taxes into this fantastic building that we can afford because you're paying us so much tax. the idea of tides being attacks and what that might have thrown up in terms of disputes with the populace.

that's maybe something we'll come on to in terms of talking about how the community was affected by tides but yeah you could definitely argue that it was rubbing their nose in it it would be like if uh today you know we sent all our hm revenue and customs forms to a big gold-plated building in the center of london you know it would be like

Is that really what we want our taxes to go and pay for? But yeah, in a way, it could be seen as that. And there are certainly records to suggest that some people thought that that was absolutely the case. I know that one of the bone of contentions that you come across quite often is...

barns that are advertised as tithe barns that aren't or weren't ever tithe barns so what are the kinds of barns do we need to distinguish a tithe barn from and maybe how can we tell the difference if we can this is by far the most difficult thing to contend with when you look at tithe barns and it's something that I had to deal with an awful lot when doing research for the book and traveling around and just trying to discern

what is a tithe barn and what isn't and actually if you look back at other essays and journals and things that have been written in the past about medieval barns it's a problem that other writers and researchers and historians come across quite a lot so

The important thing to remember is that if it's a tithe barn, it was used to store tithes. If it didn't store tithes, it's not a tithe barn and that definition is one of use. It's nothing to do with the way it looked necessarily or when it was built or how old it is.

a tithe barn stored tides, it's as simple as that. Abbeys and monasteries didn't just build barns to store tides, like modern day farmers or farmers at any point in history, barns were used to do a multitude of things, but there are a couple of specific examples of barn uses within that setting that are different to type barns. So the two main ones are Grange barns and Abbey barns. So an Abbey barn, or what we describe as an Abbey barn certainly today,

would have been a barn that was built by an abbey or a monastery or a priory to store produce farmed from that estate. Their own stuff rather than the taxes they're collecting. Exactly, their own stuff. So a prime example of that is an abbey like the one in Glastonbury Town Centre. It's actually at the Somerset Rural Life Museum. That is Glastonbury's abbey barn. So that barn was used to store produce that was farmed directly from Glastonbury Abbey itself. It didn't.

store produce necessarily that was paid as tides that wasn't the reason it was built at least it was built to store their own produce as you say and in many many cases because of the sort of appearance of it I guess and the age people look at it and just think that's a tithe barn yeah because tithe is like an old word and it's like an old barn

so it's got to be a tithe barn right but that is that that's far from the case in many examples so yeah abbey barns stored their own produce produce farmed from the abbey itself the other one is a grange barn and that's a bit more complicated because

Abbeys often had territory, property, farmland that they had jurisdiction over that were many miles from actually where the abbey was located. So a good example of that would be Bewley Abbey. Bewley Abbey owned land at Great Coxwell, which is now... in Oxfordshire and there's a tide barn there that was located on a on a grange so this is an example this is where it gets confusing of a barn that was used as a grange barn and a tide barn but a grange was essentially an outlying

area of land or an outlying farm, if you like, a grange that was responsible for storing produce owned by that abbey. but not paid as tithes. So it does become quite complicated, but essentially the Grange Barn is performing the same function as the Abbey Barn in that it's storing produce that's owned directly by the Abbey itself, but just not

on the site of the Abbey, it's on an outlying Grange. So I hope I've explained that well enough, but yeah, Grange Barnes, Abbey Barnes, Tide Barnes, broadly speaking, are the kind of three main differences that you get with these Barnes.

Where things get even more complicated, as I've just alluded to, is barns that might have been used for more than one use. So it's very difficult to actually... kind of describe it in a way. The Great Cockswell Barn is a great example, it's located on a grange that was owned by Bewley Abbey.

Curiously, it's thought to have been built at the same time that the abbey was established within the same year, which is quite strange. Sometimes you get it so that the abbey was built first and then the barn appeared afterwards, but supposedly not the case with this one. But yeah, that's an example of a barn on an outlying grange.

storing produce from that farm that's owned by the Abbey, so it's a Grange barn, but actually there's also evidence to suggest that tithes paid in that area were also stored in that barn. So it was a Grange barn and potentially a tithe barn. And most people today call it a tithe barn and that's how it's listed with the National Trust that own it. I think in that case it's probably not so false to say that. But with other examples like the barn at Bolton Abbey up north near Skipton.

They call that the tithe barn, but it was most certainly an abbey barn. There's no evidence to suggest that it ever stored tithes, and it's located within the abbey grounds, and it almost certainly stored produce that was farmed from the abbey itself. Why it's called a tithe barn now...

Perhaps it's a marketing ploy. Perhaps it's just something that's historically been the case. But yeah, that's an example of a tithe barn that almost certainly didn't store tithes. I guess like you said before, it's just a name to call an old barn sometimes, isn't it? Without understanding the implications that the word...

has to the specifics of the building. I've been trying to come up with a really good analogy to try and explain where this Tide Barn, Abbey Barn, Grange thing... comes into play and how to distinguish between them and i can't come up with any good ones but the closest thing i can come up with is it would be like having a police station a fire station and a railway station and calling them all railway stations

That's the closest thing I can kind of explain how kind of false it is in a way. You know, railway stations were there to accommodate railway tracks and passengers, not prisoners or fire engines.

We don't all call them railway. We don't call them all railway stations. We obviously make a very clear distinction between those two things, but they've all got the word station in the name. And in many ways, that's kind of what's happened with Abbey, Grange and Tithe Barnes is... for a lot of people and and and even i mean i'm not talking about the general public here calling them tithe bonds in you know falsely this is something that actually large authorities do quite regularly they

they just group all these medieval barns under tithe barns, even though actually, when you look at them individually, some of them never stored tithes. In many cases, there's not necessarily the evidence to suggest they stored tithes, but it is a really, it's the most... complicated part of this subject by far and it's compounded by more recent things like, and I don't want to put them in it necessarily because I love them as an institution, but the Ordnance Survey.

the 19th century went round and pretty much labelled every medieval barn a tithe barn just for the sake of putting them on the map things like that compound that problem and it's very very difficult in some cases to actually determine right is this a tithe barn or not it's

Yeah, it's a complicated part of the subject. Yeah. And so is there anything architectural about a tithe barn that helps identify it? Or is this really a case of going back to records to see if it was used for the storage of tithes? Is that the only way we can tell? That's an interesting one.

um architecturally there is very little distinction between for example an abbey barn and a tithe barn but there are

things that maybe lean towards one being one or the other if you don't have any records at all, if you're totally none the wiser. So the first one might be where it's located. If a barn is located within the boundaries of an abbey itself um you know like right next to the main you know the main monastery or the main abbey you're more than often looking at an abbey barn mainly because it needs to be so close to the grounds that they're farming and that produce then needs to be stored in

in that barn. If that habby or monastery is located near a settlement of any reasonable size, yes there's the chance that people from that town or village might have then paid tides into that barn, but actually in a lot of cases there would have been a separate building for that. or certainly in some cases where the the settlement was of a significant size so if it's located right next to the abbey it was probably an abbey barn similarly if there isn't an abbey anywhere nearby

and this barn's located in the middle of a town or a village, a community centre if you like, a place where all people can come together and pay these tides, then arguably you could look at that and think well actually there's more of a chance it might be a tide barn because it needs to be in a place where people can all come together and

and pay their tithes in one place. It's all quite subjective and there's no exact science behind this, unless obviously there's records to support it. But that's one thing you can look at. The other thing you can look at is There's certain architectural hallmarks that indicate the kind of produce that was stored inside. Things like pudlock holes. So they were initially used as a kind of framework to build scaffolding and help erect the building.

to clarify for my benefit as well that's where uh wooden scaffolding was used as the the rows of bricks in the wall went up and then when the wooden scaffolding is withdrawn you're left with this kind of square hole that you used to put a log in absolutely so these holes were left

in the barns and often they were left in a way that allowed like a breeze to come through because the crops that were being stored inside these barns were perishable you know and we didn't have refrigerators back then so um you know you you needed a way of keeping that

produce fresh, particularly with things like corn and wheat, things that can be nibbled on by mice and rats and what have you, and vegetables as well. So if it was a barn of a significant size, perhaps located away from an abbey and had these putlog holes in,

to store large quantities of things like corn and wheat, you're kind of thinking, well, is this all going to come from one place? Or is this actually going to be a collection of produce that's all stored from a number of different landowners and farmers? And if that's the case, actually, you're looking then, well, Why would they be all putting their produce in this one place? Is it because they're paying it's tide? So you can look at things like that. The other one, and it's a massive...

another complicated part of not just tide barns and abbey barns, but medieval barns in general, is these apotropaic symbols, you know, like these daisy wheels and things. There are certain barns where certain groups and certain historians have suggested that some of those markings where they're accompanied by dates and names might have been used to record tied payments.

There's very little evidence to suggest that's the case. The barn where that's been most suggested as a possible way of recording tides is one at Shroughton in Dorset. Curiously, that village actually has two names, Shroughton or Ewan Courtney.

And there's a U-shaped barn there. Very unusual, actually, shaped barn. And there's these daisy wheels and these apotropaic marks in the barn. And they're accompanied by dates and names. And they've kind of maybe thought that those dates and names might... refer to tithe payments. I don't buy it necessarily, but that's potentially one other architectural format that might indicate that a barn is a tithe barn. But yeah, in the vast majority of cases, the way the barn looks.

doesn't determine whether it's a tithe barn or not, or can't be really. Certainly my experience with the research that I've done. Yeah, it sounds like a pretty complex picture, even just to work out what is a tithe barn, looking at kind of socioeconomics, the area, how close it is to...

things like abbeys or settlements or whatever else, quite a complex job to work out what might be a tithe barn. So if these things tended to be kind of in the centres and towns and things, did they perform any kind of... community function so I'm thinking were they a place that people went to to meet that maybe had a bit of a social aspect to it or is it all business is it just going and paying your taxes with a sour face

and getting out of there as quickly as you can. Yeah, that's a really interesting area of the Tithe Barn story. What function did they play in the community? And actually, it's something that I probably should have researched or certainly would like to have researched more. Yes. With a number of examples that were located in the centres of towns and villages, I think it's pretty certain that people would have recognised it as a community building, a building that everybody shared the use of.

they were paying their tides to these buildings again there's not so much evidence to suggest that might have been the case that's more logic really than than hard facts but as we alluded to earlier in the conversation actually from a community point of view the biggest impact that tithes and tithing and tide barns had on the community was this dispute over taxing, you know, and the difficulties that some people had in paying these tithes and taxes. There's a really interesting source.

that suggested that in the 14th century, the abbot of Tor Abbey was basically being threatened by the local populace because there was this kind of... middle class, if you want to call it that, of people that were being tithed but really couldn't afford to put food in their own mouths. So 10% of the produce they were farming for their own sustenance was being taken away from them to be paid to Tor Abbey.

People that were below that bracket who might have been ill or in a lower class, of course, might have benefited from those tides because... The Abbey sought to distribute that wealth where possible to act in a kind of goodwill, you know, and help the community. And equally, people at the upper end of that class system that had large farms and plenty of land and things to farm from, 10% really wasn't much to them.

And so they could pay that quite easily. In this particular example, the middle classes, what was described as the middle classes around Tor Abbey were... particularly angry about the fact that they were being tied and not so much that because that was just the accepted system at the time but more to the point they felt the Abbey wasn't

using those tithes to the benefit of them. So did they feel they had a right to have a say in what was done with the tithe, or at least that they expected to see some benefit from the 10% that they were contributing? They certainly expected to see some kind of benefit in the same way that we expect to see benefits from the taxes we pay today, whether it be health care or policing or whatever. There was a similar expectation in the community there.

And as time went on, we're talking post medieval, that dispute only got more and more, not so much in England, but particularly in places like Wales and Cornwall. And it's not a subject I know too much about. But of course, there was the Tithe War in Ireland as well.

which was totally, from what I understand, the tithe system was what really caused that dispute. So the relation between tithing and the community, whether it be medieval or post-medieval, really, if you're looking at some of the sources and the evidence, it's one of... hostility in a way and just to close up on that thing with Tor Abbey in the end the Abbot of Tor Abbey actually wrote a letter to the Abbot at Glastonbury Abbey asking for help saying

I've got all these people that are angry. Some of them are threatening me. You know, we've got quite an unhappy situation here down in Devon. What do you do to aid that situation? How do you cope with that? Have you heard of the teenage werewolf prosecuted in 1603? Did you know that the 17th century British government relied heavily on female spies? And do you want to know about chin-chucking and thigh sex? Of course you do.

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Was there a barn anywhere that you found that we know a lot about that was really well evidenced and that gave you lots and lots to work with? Yes. So we mentioned it a couple of times already, but Glastonbury Abbey. A, because I have a lot of interest in Somerset, but B, because the amount of information there is specifically about...

the barns that they had and what they used them for and when they were built and what have you. There's a fascinating essay written in 1991 by CJ Bond and JB Weller called The Somerset Barnes of Glastonbury Abbey. That was one of the main sources that I used.

for doing a lot of research as well as visiting the barns in person and that really explains a lot about how the abbey and the barns operated the relationship between the two so in the 14th century one of the sources suggests that it has to be owned as much as one-eighth of Somerset as a county so they had jurisdiction over one-eighth of the county but they also had

jurisdiction overlands in Devon, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, and I think also in South Wales. So they had a lot of land, basically. And of course, with a lot of land, there's a lot of tithes that come with that, you know, that they are entitled to receiving. So they had this... structure of property set up to receive tithes in all these different places and so they had barns in

all sorts of little villages in Somerset like Western Zoyland which is a tiny little place on the levels as well as places like Pilton which I'll come on to in a minute that's the place where the Glastonbury Festival takes place and it's quite clear with Glastonbury Abbey and the barns that they had which ones might have been abbey barns which ones might have been tithe barns there's a lot more evidence floating around to suggest what did what basically so if you start at

and I know we've talked about it already, but the abbey barn in Glastonbury itself at the Somerset Rural Life Museum, that was built in the 1340s and that was built next to the abbey. It stored produce stored from the abbey itself. So as I say, we've talked about it already, but that's an example, prime example of an abbey barn.

It's also an example of a barn that was built, as we've already explained, to express wealth with carvings of patron saints and things. It was built to an architecturally very high standard. If you then look at the barn in Pilton.

so this is also owned by Glastonbury Abbey, it was also built by Glastonbury Abbey in the 14th century around its thaw at the same time as the Glastonbury Abbey barn. That was also built it's thought as an abbey barn so to store produce farmed from the abbey and it's thought that the abbey owned land at Pilton so it was kind of just an expansion of the territory really for those that don't know Pilton's only just down the road from Glastonbury that's why the Glastonbury festival is held there

But then as time goes on, there's evidence to suggest that tithe payments from the local area were also then paid into the barn. So what was originally built as an abbey barn became potentially a tithe barn. It's also possibly a reason why that term gets confused with that barn in particular. All the signposts in Pilton Village say tithe barn, but there's not necessarily the evidence to suggest that it was built as a tithe barn. So that's an interesting one.

In between the two, so you've got Glastonbury and Pilton, there's a village between the two called West Penard, and there's a barn there that's called a court barn. Now that's because there was a historic court located nearby. But actually, there's evidence to suggest that that was a tithe barn and the tithes were paid into that barn from the time that it was built. And that was built slightly later in the 15th century. So they've got these three barns set up, two storing.

produce from their own lands, the one in the middle storing produce paid as tides, and then to kind of top off, to kind of complete the collection, there's also one at Dalting, so that's a village actually slightly further into sort of East Somerset if you like.

And that was part of that network as well. There was a manor adulting, and so it's thought that the produce stored in that barn was probably farmed from the manor. But again, there's also evidence to suggest that... and the villages around would have received tithes in that area and those tithes would have been paid to that barn.

So that could have functioned as a Grange barn and a Tithe barn. Quite, exactly. So what's really interesting about Glastonbury Abbey and those four barns is the structure of the kind of positioning of those barns and where they are. sort of concrete dates that they were built so from 1340s onwards into the 15th century and the purpose with which they were intended for so as i say

with Glastonbury and Pilton, that was certainly to store their own produce. There's a lot of evidence there to play with, which I think is really good. Where things get really interesting is that there's another barn in Mel's, which is kind of going off towards North Somerset and Bath.

that kind of area near like Radstock, I think. And that barn was also thought to have been built and owned by Glastonbury Abbey, but it's not included in any of the reference material that references Glastonbury's barns.

So whether that was something that came at a later time or whether it was built later, whether it performed a slightly different function in that village, I'm not too sure if I'm honest, but that's really interesting because the four barns at Glastonbury, Pilton, West Penard and Dalting.

are very much grouped together as one entity, if you like. They've all got similar styles with the porches. They were thought to have been built by the same team of craftsmen. They have similarities in their size and width and the way they functioned. Glastonbury Abbey was really where a lot of that initial setup in terms of thinking about how these barns were used came from and actually to put not too fine a point on it

The barn at Pilton is the barn that sparked this interest off of me in the first place. It's the first barn I went to see and I had no idea what a tithe barn was or an abbey barn was or any of this, but the story of that barn in particular is really interesting and really got the subject going for me.

You just mentioned having porches on the barns and things like that. So I assume these were designed architecturally. If you go and look at one today, you've got to be thinking about people are delivering potentially big wagon loads of stuff here. So I presume they're built in a way that...

You can see where that might have been dropped off and presumably removed from the barn at a later date. So I presume architecturally we can look at them and see how they were built to facilitate that kind of delivery and removal of large quantities of goods.

Yeah. So in many ways, you can look at them kind of like a modern warehouse facility. You know, the lorries come in one end and they go out the other and there's, you know, one way systems and, you know, way bridges and all that kind of thing.

You kind of had the same sort of thing with these medieval barns, whether they were used to store tides or produce from the abbey or delivered from an outlying range. As a barn themselves, they all had the same kind of setup. So as you say, with the porches. The vast majority of these medieval barns had two large porches opposite one another. In some of the larger examples, you had four. So two sets of porches opposite one another. Bradford on Avon, perfect example of that. And as you say.

the carts would come in one end if the barn was built on a on an incline they would come in the higher end and they'd come full to the brim with hay or wheat or corn so it'd be piled up really high

They would come in, if it was wheat, then the barn would almost certainly have a threshing floor. People talk about threshing barns as if there's some kind of totally different thing to tide barns and abbey barns, but in the vast majority of cases, abbey barns and tide barns were built with a threshing purpose as well.

if you imagine a cart full of wheat it would come in the one end full it would stop the wheat would be offloaded the breeze coming through would help separate the wheat and the chaff like as threshing was done back then the chaff would

be blown away and brushed away and the wheat would be piled up in one corner of the barn you know potentially in one area to represent one person's tithe payment possibly there is evidence to suggest that rafters were used to store things on multiple levels and that might have separated different tithe payments out

And then the empty barn would then just carry on out the other end. And there'd be like a one-way system. And actually, in some barns, the one-way system was enforced because one port would be higher than the other. So the entrance port would be much taller because the barn would be full and have this... peaked pile of wheat or corn or whatever in, and then by the time it's finished and it's empty, it would go out the shorter exit.

So, yeah, there was this whole kind of system set up in many cases to make sure that the flow of produce coming in and out, which would have been very regular at times like harvest and when these type payments were made to make sure that things run smoothly. carts were going in one way and going out the other way. And yeah, there was a whole system set up in a lot of examples. I think it's interesting when you go to these places today to be able to see...

the functionality that existed for the reasons the barn was originally made for. You know, we tend to look at them as being nice old features now, but these were actually practical, functional elements of the work that that building did when it was originally put together.

When did tithe barns start to go out of use or fall into disrepair or things? I guess in my mind, I think dissolution of the monasteries, but the monasteries and abbeys may have disappeared. to a great extent at that point but i guess the relationship with the church and the the practice of tithing didn't necessarily end straight away

Yeah, so disillusion of the monasteries is really interesting because it's very easy to assume, as you just alluded to, that by getting rid of the abbeys and the monasteries, they get rid of the barns associated with them as well. But actually, what's quite clear is in examples... like Abbotsbury and Glastonbury. In fact, a lot of the notable abbeys that we've already mentioned, Shaftesbury, Bewley.

The main buildings would go and be ruined and destroyed, but the barns were really useful to whoever inherited that land afterwards. So in a lot of cases, for example, if you're looking again at Glastonbury Abbey, the Duke of Somerset, Edward Seymour took over that. He inherited that.

land. He needed a barn to store all that produce that was still farmed and in many cases the receipt of tithes was passed over to private landowners or the Church of England. It would then go and become a process where tithes were paid to the rector. So, yeah, the Barnes were just as useful as they would have been pre-dissolution. So that didn't change the Barnes necessarily, and it didn't change the system to a great, to a huge degree, but it was...

nevertheless a really important milestone in the history of those barns because all of a sudden that might have been when the use changed perhaps from being an abbey barn to a tide barn for example you know because there's no abbey to take those produce that's been farmed from the abbey anymore if that

private landowner, member of the landed gentry, all of a sudden owned all this land and he needed a place to store tithes that were being paid to him or her as a matter of course, then they would continue to use them. Ruined tithe barns and ruined medieval barns are actually rarer than you think because so many of them were kept intact. Notable examples are at Soodley Castle and

There's one at Chantarnam in South Wales as well. But yeah, most of them were kept intact because they were useful basically to anyone that inherited them. Yeah. And I guess if you didn't want it, you would tear it down rather than just leave it to crumble. Yeah. The stone and the wood would have been valuable.

There's loads of examples where medieval barns were taken down and used to rebuild other buildings, whether they be private residences or churches in some cases. So where they were taken down or demolished.

They were valuable in more than one way, either as an intact building or as the raw materials to help build something else. And so I guess then they kind of suffer from the weakening of the rural economy as the centuries go by. We get a little bit beyond medieval period here, I guess. kind of tie off where they end. Is there an end date for tithe bonds being used as tithe bonds?

Yeah, so post-medieval, particularly 17th, 18th centuries, things start to change with tide barns. So the tithing system is very much still in place. And as I say, it's very much a system that's in place for the Church of England. Rectors are receiving tithes from villages. In fact, there's loads of... Tide barns that become, that get built from the 16th, 17th, 18th centuries. Tide barns continue to be built, obviously.

aesthetically they look very different they perhaps built you know in the 18th century there might be brick rather than stone or wood They might be smaller. They might not be as grand. They might not be an expression of wealth. They might be more practical. But the tithing system really didn't change. What did change, as you mentioned, is the habits in farming. People went from arable to pastoral. Land was sold off for.

mining, trade and commerce became commonplace in big cities and towns. Basically, yes, people. did farming and if less people did farming there were less people to offer tides because tides were defined by their payment as produce not as cash or bonds like perhaps was the case in uh france and germany and other european countries it was still farmed produce so if you didn't have a farm and you weren't farming any produce you didn't have to pay your tithes and this

again, became a contentious subject, not necessarily for the community, but for the directors and the religious establishments. There's a really interesting excerpt from 1730, the Vicar of Wendsbury, Edward Eddington. So this is in the West Midlands.

basically complaining that he's not being paid enough tides because so much land is being reused for mining to mine coal there's no there's no tithe payments on coal and so all that land that was used for for farming he's not receiving the tides of anymore and he's asking for help basically um to see whether the tide system can be changed to maybe introduce a tide on coal or increase the amount that people have to give if they still own a farm so yeah the as farming

Habits changed, tithing changed, and tithe barns, as I say, they continued to be built, they continued to be used, but what was offered as tithes basically decreased. And there were cases as well of parishes. and the authorities the ecclesiastical authorities basically hunting for things that they could tithe more so they could keep upkeep their their income basically there's a really interesting story about lynmouth so in devon where

Only certain kinds of fish were being tithed by the fishing community. And one year they had an influx of, I think, Irish herring. And that wasn't a tithable fish. So all the fishermen would... make hay while the sun shines I suppose by you know fishing all this Irish herring because they could keep it they didn't have to offer anything to the church when the church kind of got wind of that they were like actually we need to start tithing this because they're the public are basically fishing

and they're keeping it all to themselves. So they introduced a tithe on Irish herring, and that didn't go down very well with the fishing community at all. And then a couple of years later, the Irish herring disappeared. it was kind of made out that it was because the church were being too greedy.

and god didn't look favorably upon the church tithing something that they weren't tithing before and that was why the fish went away it was punishment to the church from god saying you're being too greedy you're tithing too much so that was really interesting another example of where

produce was changed was a flax in Bridport. Rope making industry was really important in Bridport and in the sort of 17th and 18th centuries as the industry increased around rope making, the tithing situation around flax. edged and flowed. In some years it was, in some years it wasn't. And the tithe barn at Simmonsbury is thought to have stored a lot of flax located just down the road from Bridgeport. So yeah, as time moved on post medieval tithing habits change because of the change in

in farming habits and industry and how that developed and basically that culminated eventually in the commutation of tides act 1836 which basically said from now on tides won't be paid as produce anymore it'll be paid as cash by that time A lot of tithes in the sort of late 18th, early 19th century, a lot of tithes were being paid as cash anyway, because that was something that was being imposed by individual authorities, parishes, churches. But by 1836, it became.

commonplace. So from then on, tides became cash. And of course, if tides became paid as cash, there was no need for these big barns to store all this produce anymore. A lot of them were being used for other things anyway, as I say, if they were arable farms.

being turned into pastoral farms they were used to store livestock and fodder rather than hay wheat and corn and by that time actually a lot of them were modified in some cases for use as houses you know early victorian houses in some cases In other cases, they were modified to store machinery, traction engines, threshing machines, what have you.

that kind of marked the end officially for the tide barn and the tide system in total came to an end in 1966 and actually some of the people I spoke to in research for the book I spoke to a couple of

people that had inherited farms that had to pay final tithes in the 60s, which was really interesting. I didn't necessarily expect to meet anyone that still paid any tithes, but yeah, I did. And I guess we still see tithe barns, as we said at the start, dotted around the landscape today.

And I guess that's a case of them continuing to evolve and find new uses. So what kind of things are tithe barns being used for today? Yeah, so tithe barns that still exist today occupy a variety of uses, some more unusual than others. if we look at farming first of all as farming developed what you had actually in some cases with tide farms were kind of modified to suit what

farming practices were in place at the time. So as I just alluded to, a lot of them were used to store equipment and things. There's a really interesting medieval barn, or certainly a barn with medieval origins, I should say. It's on the Somerset Devon border near Chard.

at a place called Cotley and what's really interesting about that barn is it's been chopped and changed and shaped and modified and bits added on and bits not through as farming habits have changed over time so the two really interesting examples of that are there's one area where the wall has been knocked through and replaced with brick and there's these square holes in the wall of course seeing other tide barns and other medieval barns around it's easy to think oh they're puttlog holes

because they're like little square holes that you see in the wall, but actually they're not. They're for running belts, for visiting traction engines and threshing machines and generators and things like that. So the belts would be run through these holes to operate machinery.

in the barn, perhaps things like, I don't know, shears for shearing sheep or something. I don't know specifically, but something like that. So that's really interesting. At the other end of the barn, you then got an extra bit built onto the end with a partition wall and a door at an angle.

and inside that little area there's a like a gully built on an incline that runs to the one end of the building and you think wow that's obviously not an original feature why would that have been built onto this end of this barn and the farmer who currently farms there a chap called Tom Eames who's really helpful with the research of the book was explaining that that was built as a slaughterhouse.

And the reason why the door is at an angle is so that the other livestock in that barn couldn't see the individual animals being slaughtered. And the drain at the one side at an angle was, of course, for the things to run out that resulted from that slaughter. The first thing to note is that a lot of these barns were used as farming habits changed still in an agricultural setting. And I'm very pleased to say that there are still some medieval barns that are used for farming.

namely the one at Dalting which we spoke about earlier as being one of the Glastonbury barns and the one at Foster which was built by St Peter's Abbey in Gloucester but was thought to have been like a kind of Grange barn or

They call it an estate barn, so it was used to store produce from that estate. The owner who currently occupies it is absolutely adamant that it should not be called a tithe barn, even though it's called that in the Historic England Listed Building Register. That's the first thing to look at when it comes to... The use of these medieval barns and how they've evolved is, first and foremost, kind of followed farming. This is Jacob Goldstein from What's Your Problem?

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But... In the modern day, there's all sorts of uses. So a lot of them were converted to houses, residences, some Victorian, some later, some as recently as the last 10 years. that's one way that they've been used and a lot of people say like oh that's a shame you know they should be still used for farming what have you actually in many cases that have been demolished if they weren't converted to homes and there's some examples actually

where from an exterior point of view they don't look too different and they've still kept actually a lot of what makes the barn the barn the porches are still there the putluck holes are still there they might be filled in with some glass maybe but actually a lot of those things are still there which is great

Other more unusual examples of how they've been used, there's one at Drayton St Leonard in Oxfordshire that was once owned by Dorchester Abbey. Dorchester on Thames, not Dorchester in Dorset. And that's now a repository for the Aston Martin Heritage Trust. So they have a collection of Aston Martin vehicles in there, including at the time that I went to visit the world's oldest Aston Martin.

and a couple of concept cars from the 1990s as well so that's one really unusual use. A lot of them are museums so as we've already said the one at the Somerset Rural Life Museum was the Abbey Barn for Glastonbury. You've got a number of National Trust properties. The one at Great Coxwell is a National Trust property. Ashleworth Tide Barn is a National Trust property. Middle Littleton in Worcestershire used to be part of Evesham Abbey. That is now a National Trust property. And interestingly...

Tithes were paid in the form of apples into that barn, which is quite interesting because of the orchards nearby. And Buckland Abbey in Devon, that's also a National Trust property, they have the Great Barn and that will most certainly store produce farmed from the Abbey. not paid as tides. So yeah, a lot of them are museums. And then another really interesting use actually is schools. So the Tide Barn at Nailsea in Somerset, that was converted into a school in 1792 by Hannah Moore.

who a lot of people will know was a philanthropist in the area, set up a lot of schools in places like Cheddar and Blagdon and Bristol. Tide Barn at Nailsea was... not being used in 1792. She elected to create a school from the building and that lasted right the way through until the 1980s.

so it was a school right the way through that time there are people alive today that went to that school as a child which is which is fascinating and this similar story happened although much later with Melksham Tide Barn

in Wiltshire and that became a school I think in the Victorian era and lasted for just less than 100 years and then became a private home. And of course another really interesting use for tithe barns in the modern setting is wedding venues. So many have been converted into wedding venues. It was something that really started in the 1990s with the great Tithe Barn at Tetbury and the Tithe Barn at Lawnton, the Abista.

And since then, it's kind of snowballed, really, in loads of barn venues, whether they were tithe barns, medieval barns, or more contemporary barns, you know, 17th, 18th, 19th century. Wedding venues are a huge part of their history now and for the wedding industry.

as well, quite an important aspect. So yeah, that's another really popular use for medieval barns in today's setting. They've found a use and found a way to survive. I guess one quick last question then to put you on the spot to round off with.

If listeners could go to see one tithe barn, what's the one that you would recommend if you've got a favourite? So the two that are most popularly visited by people, and I totally support why they are.

so popular are Bradford-on-Avon in Wiltshire owned by Shaftesbury Abbey built in i think the 1330s so it's certainly 14th century it's one of the largest in the country in fact i think it's one of the largest in europe it's got four porches two pairs opposite one another and it went under some pretty significant structural work in the 1950s because the

weight of the roof was so heavy it was pushing the walls outwards and it was restored by english heritage it's still owned by english heritage it's used for filming so anyone that watched the netflix series cursed might have seen it being used for the filming in that series

and it's not too far from Bath it's kind of on the edge of the Cotswolds it's you know it's the kind of place that people go and visit Bradford-on-Avon's a really nice place to visit anyway so yeah that's one that a lot of people visit and I would wholeheartedly recommend people go and see that one if they get a chance the other one is great

Oxwell National Trust property in Oxfordshire, not far from Farringdon. And that's probably one of the best examples. Aesthetically, it's the most pleasing. It looks like what most people expect a tie bond to look like. It's huge. It's in its own field.

nothing around it built up it really makes it look impressive it did store tides it was on an outlying range so there's that difficulty of whether it was a grange barn or a tide barn or both but it's really impressive the gable end doors that are knocked in

on the gable ends they're a later edition 18th century but the building is medieval it's got loads of putlog holes you can go inside it it's generally open to the public as a kind of outdoor attraction and yeah so that's one i'd i'd really recommend and If anyone's interested in kind of getting into the subject, it's not necessarily a tithe barn. There's very little evidence to suggest it ever was one. But this one at Pilton.

where the Glastonbury site is. It's owned by Michael Evis. It was restored in the 1990s. If you went to the Glastonbury Festival in the 1990s, some of your ticket money would have gone to actually fund the repairs of that building. It sadly burnt down in a fire in 1963. funds from the Glastonbury festival we used to repair it which is absolutely fantastic as I say

That sparked the interest in this subject for me. It's got such a fascinating history. It was used by the Women's Land Army during the Second World War. It stored tractors. Michael Evis went and saved his tractor when it caught fire in the 60s. It's just got a really great history. And if anyone...

in the Somerset area I'd recommend going and seeing that one as well again it's generally open to the public I think it has been closed through the various lockdowns we've had but it is generally open the door's left unlocked you can go and have a look and they do have things like classical music in there sometimes you know

normal times. So yeah, those three, I think I would highlight as being my three favorites and certainly the three that I'd recommend people go and visit. That's fantastic. Thank you very much, Joe. Thank you so much for joining us. And if anyone wants to look out for Joe's book, Tithe Bonds.

It's fascinating to get to know these buildings a little bit better and to understand where they came from and why we can still see them today. So I found that really interesting. Thank you, Joe. If you'd like to hear more from Gone Medieval, then subscribe wherever you get your podcasts from.

and tell all your friends and family that you've gone medieval. While I've got you, I did catch an episode of the Ancients podcast, which is also from History Hit, on the lessons from the Antonine Plague, in which Tristan's joined by Dr Nick Somerton to discuss the...

Relevant topic, I guess, to the situation we've all found ourselves in for the last year or so. Parallels to the second century plague that swept through the Roman world. But I better let you guys go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with history hits.

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