Croxley Great Barn

A grade II* listed building, Croxley Great Barn is a timberframed aisled barn with a crownpost roof. It is one of a group of stylistically similar barns in the vicinity of St Albans.
Although the barn underwent restoration in 1972/75, it remains remarkably complete. It is of particular interest in that it has a number of crucklike intermediate arcade shores set at half bay intervals which look a little like basecrucks. They are braced back to the aisle wall posts by `stubties' that appear original, but at their tops they only cradle the arcade plates. There remains some doubt about whether or not these features are original. The passingbraces rise to stop at tie beam level. The crownpost/purlin support was apparently only set over the midstrey bay. All the tie beams are slightly cambered, though the collars are not.
Dating was therefore commissioned by English Heritage in order to try and establish the date for this barn, thus effectively dating the other similar barns in the vicinity, and to see if dendrochronology would be able to settle the discussion about whether or not the intermediate arcade shores were original.
Despite the use of relatively fastgrown young oak trees to provide the large timbers in this barn, dendrochronological dating was possible. Some timbers exhibited unusual growth patterns and these could not be dated. This implies that some of the timbers may have been managed, suffered disease, or insect defoliation, during their lifetime.
Only one sample retained complete sapwood, giving a felling date of the winter AD 1397/8. Three of the other timbers which dated crossmatched well with each other and appeared to have come from a single group of timbers, perhaps representing a single woodland source. The other dated timbers exhibited likely felling dates which incorporated winter AD 1397/8, and it seems likely that they were all felled at the same time.
This date agrees well with the historical records suggesting that the barn was most likely to have been constructed during John Moote's abbacy. One intermediate arcade shore was dated, this being one of the four timbers in the site chronology. This shows that these unusual features were indeed part of the original build of the barn.