Building record BED 039 - Barn at Crown Farm

A mid-19th century three-bay timber-framed and weatherboarded barn with atatched sheds facing the site entrance to the east. The 1842 map shows what appears to be the present barn which would have newly built at the time, as part of a longer range of outbuildings. It formed a small three-bay threshing barn of traditional layout, extending to only 9.75m in length, but with full-height central entrance doors facing the road to the north and a narrow rear door on the south. Its intact roof structure of staggered butt-purlins was initially thatached but is now covered with corrugated iron. A stable probably adjoined its western agble with a cow-shed on the west, but the former was demolished in the early 20th century and repalced by a small porch-like structure that appears to have been designed as a summer-house. The cow-shed stills survives and consists of clay-lump or shuttered clay with a pantiled roof but was later converted into a shelter-shed and more reccently into an office, disguising most of its early fabric. An open-ended lean-to against this shed's northern wall was added shortly before 1900 but has been compeltely rebuilt. The studs of the barn's front wall have also been replaced, but the rest of the frame is well preserved (S1).