The gigantic barns built by the major landowners of medieval England are among our most important historic monuments. Impressive structurally and architecturally, they have much to tell us about the technology of the time and its development, and are buildings of great and simple beauty. But, unlike houses, castles and churches, barns were centres of production, where grain crops were stored and threshed, and allow us to glimpse a very different side of medieval life - the ceaseless round of the farming year on which the lives of rich and poor depended.
