Just outside London, at the edge of a school playing field in Rickmansworth, a great hulking, undulating roofline rises above a clutch of trees. There’s a cacophony of tapping and scraping noises as I approach the building.
Passing through the huge doors from bright sunlight into cool shadow my eyes are immediately drawn upwards to the great, soaring roof space lined with graceful pillars and buttresses.
What a sight the Croxley Great Barn must have been to medieval peasants. Can you imagine people used to living in tiny huts bringing their harvests or coming to work at this massive barn, 38 feet wide and 101 feet in length?
It was part of a farm belonging to the estate of St Albans Abbey, part of a string of Monastic Grange Barns necessary for storing the food of the organisation. Built in the century after England suffered severe weather and famine in 1315-17, having such a repository was vital if you were to always be able to entertain the King should he happen to visit…
And this would have been the mother of all barns. Built using the same techniques and probably the same workpeople as St Albans Abbey, the quality, scale and construction all indicate a building of very high status. It was certainly built to last!
Since the Abbey was dissolved by Henry VIII in the 1530s the Croxley Great Barn has had a mixed history. One of the Cambridge University colleges took ownership and then in the 20th century the land was purchased to provide extra playing fields for a local school.
If you had seen the barn in 1974 you would have thought it was not going to last the century. Part of the roof had completely collapsed and it was being used as a storehouse. Until around 2003 it was definitely an ‘at risk’ historical building.
Looking after such a structure is clearly outside the remit or the budget of a school and that is where organisations like the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) and English Heritage have stepped in to to help make sure the Croxley Great Barn isn’t lost for future generations.
Funnily enough, the very neglect of the barn means that we can see what, for example, the roof of St Albans Abbey, would have looked like in the middle ages if it had not been altered so dramatically in more recent centuries.
The focus of the SPAB is on repair, and on preserving the building as it is ‘in the landscape’. All building repairs must be reversible but the ‘fixes’ applied over the centuries are now seen as an important part of the story of the barn.
Around 30 people were hard at work on the Croxley Great Barn when I visited – it was the annual summer SPAB Working Party when historical architects and other specialist people give up their time to camp in a field and bring back history from the abyss.
SPAB founder William Morris and his Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood friends would have been so proud. And it looks like the Croxley Great Barn is going to be upgraded from a Grade II* listed building to Grade I, putting it in the same category as historical sites such as Stonehenge.
Although it was fascinating to see the SPAB at work, I would like to come back with a quiet tour and enjoy the space in peace – to imagine the ghosts of threshers from 600 years ago, patiently at work in this great agricultural cathedral of medieval England. Or the sound of Cromwellian soldiers sharpening their blades on the stones during the Civil War.
Guided tours are run on the last Sunday of each month through the warm months by the nearby Three Rivers Museum (an interesting collection of historical artefacts from the local Rickmansworth area) and cover the social history of the barn as well as its structure.
By Natasha von Geldern
Hi Natasha
I would like to copy your 2014 article on Saving Croxley Great Barn : I’m trying to bring it back into some sort of community use. Another of the outlier barns is lying dismantled in Chiltern Open Air Museum – St Juliens. It was dismantled in the 1960’s and marked for reassembly but the markings have worn off!! Obviously I’ll credit you totally – I’m off to the 3 Rivers Museum this week to see if I can resurrect the Friends of Croxley Great Barn. We moved into Croxley 4 years ago from just down the road in Hillingdon and I never knew it existing although I lived 4 miles away for 23 years. Your article is a great record of the last refurb. Only the pigeons occupy it now sadly. Hopefully I can get an Open Day organised in 2023. Happy to involve you if you’d like to keep a watching brief.
Keep safe
Hi Tony, you are welcome to use my article to support your efforts and I would love to be updated on progress!