One Thousand Miles in 2014: 25 Jan

Another non-walking day. Not much pleasure in traipsing trough the fields in this weather. However, I'll try to keep some regularity to this blog by writing on other subjects of interest. Today, the Big Barn!

Last year, groundworks for a new building in Southam town centre unearthed the foundation courses of a large, medieval building, 10m (30 feet) wide and perhaps 40m (130 feet) long. It was immediately identified as a 'tithe barn'. In medieval times, one tenth ('tithe') of all produce had to be given to the church, and this was the building it was stored in. The new buildings being constructed here are going to be called 'Tithe Mews' or something like that, in commemoration of it.

The foundations of the barn - only the western half was uncovered, the building would have continued to the east.

However ... In 1951 Josephine Tey wrote a detective novel called 'The Daughter of Time', in which a detective hospitalised with a broken leg decides to pass the time during his recovery by reviewing the case against Richard the Third as a bad king and child murderer. This image is methodically unpicked using historical sources, until it become evident that Richard was probably an excellent monarch whose reputation was comprehensively trashed by his successors for their own political ends, and the image fixed in the public mind by the popularity of Shakespeare's play, itself written to please the descendants of Richard's enemies who were still in power and controlled the theatre. It's a novel I think every student of history should read, because it really makes one think about the nature of 'fact', and question received wisdom.

Was the thing found in Southam really a tithe barn? When it comes to the subject in general, there are no mentions of 'tithe barns' in any medieval source. The term first appears in the mid-1500s, and even then is not linked to any specifically large buildings. The tithe barns of later centuries are always smaller buildings, often tucked away in side streets or country lanes, and, even then, probably had multiple functions. It appears to have been later generations, looking back at these impressive ancient buildings, such as the one uncovered in Southam, who imagined that they must have had some special purpose other than being simply 'big barns'.

So, Southam's 'tithe barn' was really just a big barn. Big and impressively constructed because it was built by and belonged to the church. The church was very much in charge of everything in those days, and when it decided to build anything it tended to work on a grand scale in keeping with its status. The building would have functioned throughout the year, a place for sheltering livestock, storing feed, threshing corn, as well as having non-agricultural functions such as a place of assembly, festivals or even church courts or council meetings. There is no documentary evidence of Southam's building, so it must have disappeared by the end of the medieval period (1066-1500). A document of the eary 1400s does mention 'a long building beside the churchyard made for the drapery', but this reference is probably to a lesser structure, as a big stone barn does not seem a likely site for cloth manufacture.

I visited the site in August, and a man in a suit said "I'm not letting you on the site" even before I'd asked. "We're going it rip it up and use the stones to build feature work in the new construction." I took some photographs over the fences, but within a few days the stonework was indeed 'ripped up' and put in to large storage bags, and the site covered up.

Goodbye, big barn.

Addition, 11 Feb: the date of the barn is confirmed as being built sometime between 1250 and 1400. See comments for detail.