Great Coxwell Barn

Great Coxwell was a large manor, which the Domesday Book of 1086 recorded as 20 hides. In 1205 King John granted the manor to Beaulieu Abbey. When the Cistercian Beaulieu Abbey in Hampshire was founded in 1204–05, King John endowed it with a group of manors that were headed by Great Faringdon and included Great Coxwell. Beaulieu retained the manors until 1538, when it surrendered all its properties to the Crown in the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The Abbey seems to have had the barn built about 1292. Dendrochronology has established that some of the timbers in the roof of the barn were felled in the winter of 1291–92, and building with unseasoned timber was then common practice. Other…

The barn is open to the public daily from dawn to dusk. Just outside the farmyard is a lay-by large enough for a small number of visitors' cars to be parked. Great Coxwell can be reached by Stagecoach West Gold bus route 66 from Swindon, Oxford and Faringdon. Buses run generally every 20 minutes from Mondays to Saturdays and every 30 minutes on Sundays. The nearest stop is just off the main A420 road, about 0.6 mi from the barn.