GAZATTEER

Barn Conversions

There is a wide range of opinions about barn conversions. Many people think that all barns should be preserved as working agricultural buildings, but it is surely unfair to expect farmers to maintain outmoded and uneconomic buildings for our pleasure. I think it is better that they should be converted either for community, commercial or domestic use than that they should disappear altogether. Certainly the great barns like Coggeshall Grange, Great Coxwell, Bradford-on-Avon etc. should be preserved as part of our heritage, but the lesser barns depend on local and private funding for their survival. For those of us who are interested in barn conversions, I will be developing links and examples as I come across them.

There have been a couple of interesting books published recently on the subject and on the right you will see a link to barnsetc who specialise in selling barns and barn conversions. They also have a page of recommended books. There are also a number of companies who specialise in building timber framed buildings, either with new green oak or using recycled timber or whole frames. If you know of such companies, please email me so that I can add them to this page.

This March (2009) we stayed in Kent to visit some of the Kent barns, particularly the ones at Wye Agricultural Museum near Ashford and the one at Littlebourne near Canterbury. We stayed in a very nice Bed & Breakfast called Orchard Barn, in a barn conversion, near Worth on the east coast.