Listed Building record MDO5210 - Barn, Winterborne Clenston

A barn thought to have been built in the late 16th century, but incorporating 15th-century roof timbers. The walls of the building are of banded flint and rubble with ashlar dressings and the roof is covered with modern tiles. The roof timbers are of high quality; it has been suggested that they may have come from a monastic building at Milton Abbey.

BARN 83850304, 100 yds. S. of the Manor House, has walls of banded flint and rubble, with ashlar dressings. The roof is covered with modern tiling. The walls of the barn (84 ft. by 29 ft.) are probably of the late 16th century but the roof timbers are of the 15th century; they comprise the greater part of seven hammer-beam trusses. The members are richly moulded and of outstanding quality, but of unknown provenance; they may perhaps come from a monastic building at Milton Abbey.

HHR Grade 1. <1,2>

Manor Farm Barn. Grade I. <3,4>

<1> Royal Commission on Historic Monuments, 1970, An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset, Volume III (Central) Part 2, 295 (Monograph). SDO136.

‘(3) BARN (83850304), 100 yds. S. of the Manor House, has walls of banded flint and rubble, with ashlar dressings. The roof is covered with modern tiling. The walls of the barn (84 ft. by 29 ft.) are probably of the late 16th century but the roof timbers are of the 15th century; they comprise the greater part of seven hammer-beam trusses (Plate 216). The members are richly moulded and of outstanding quality, but of unknown provenance; they may perhaps come from a monastic building at Milton Abbey.
The plan is of six bays with transeptal N. and S. doorways in the third bay from the W. Externally the walls have a continuous chamfered plinth and the bays are defined by two-stage buttresses with weathered offsets; there are no buttresses at the corners. The E. wall has a central ventilation loop with a chamfered square-headed surround; it is flanked by modern windows. The N. wall has a similar loop at the centre of each bay, except where the transeptal bay occurs. The N. transeptal bay has a pitched roof at right-angles to the main roof, and a weatherboarded gable; in the E. wall is a square-headed doorway with a rough timber surround. The main N. doors are hung on oak jambs and above is a rough oak lintel with a raised centre. The S. wall and S. transeptal bay are similar to those on the N., except that the S. transept has a square-headed doorway in the W. as well as in the E. side; both these doorways are blocked with 18th-century brickwork. The W. wall has been restored, using original materials including the central loop; the W. gable is weatherboarded.
Inside, the walls are of clunch with brick repairs. The six bays of the roof are defined by seven trusses, the end trusses rising over the E. and W. walls. Nearly all the members of each truss are decorated with roll-mouldings, ogee-mouldings and hollow-chamfers, as also are the purlins, but the large horizontal hammer-beams are undecorated. The hammer-beams are undecorated. The hammer-beams are supported on moulded wall-standards and on curved and moulded braces which spring from shaped stone corbels. The moulded principal rafters rise from the heads of the hammer-beams and are connected at about half height by moulded and cambered collar-beams; the collars are braced from the hammer-beams with curved and moulded braces, forming two-centred arches. The hammer-beams also support moulded uprights which meet the principal rafters at the intersection of the collar-beams. The triangular spaces so formed are bisected by inclined struts, also moulded. Above the collar-beams the principal rafters are braced with small moulded collar-ties near the top (many of them missing), and with small oblique struts to the collars. The seven trusses support purlins at three levels; the lower purlins, just above the hammer-beams, and the middle ones, at the ends of the main collars, are richly moulded; the top purlins are chamfered. Curved wind-braces between the principal rafters and the purlins are unmoulded, and are apparently secondary since mortices for other windbraces occur elsewhere on the principals.’

<2> DOE (HHR), 1954, List of Buildings of Special Historic or Architectural Interest: Blandford Rural District, 20 (Scheduling record). SDO17701.

<3> DOE (HRR), 11 Feb 1985, List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest: District of West Dorset amendment 1985, 42-3 (Scheduling record). SWX1410.

<4> Newman, J, and Pevsner, N, 1972, The Buildings of England: Dorset, 479 (Monograph). SWX1290.

<5> Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 1884, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Antiquarian Field Club, 19 (Serial). SDO4.

<6> Bridge, M, 2014, Manor Farm Barn, Winterborne Clenston, Dorset. Tree-Ring Analysis of Oak Timbers (Unpublished document). SDO14876.

<7> National Record of the Historic Environment, 205796 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

Record last edited

Mar 4 2025 2:11PM