Great fire of Bredon’s medieval barn led to an important debate on our heritage
ON April 18, 1980 a couple of schoolkids at Bredon bunked off lessons and, espying the ancient timber-framed barn filled with 200 tons of hay (tinder dry) and an assortment of farm vehicles (with petrol in the tanks), thought, “Just the place for a Woodbine”.
A visitor to Bredon spotted the smoke and later reported that if he’d had a bucket of water he could easily have put the small fire out. He didn’t know there was a fire extinguisher just inside the barn door, so ran off to find a phone, which he did, but it took time.
Minutes after the 999 call, fire brigades from Pershore, Evesham and Tewkesbury arrived. They were greeted by a vision of hell, but bravely manhandled burning bales of hay out of the barn as roof slates in slabs fell like brimstone about them.
In two hours, 650 years of architectural heritage was reduced to charcoal. But the firefighters had miraculously managed to save about a fifth of the structure intact, which was crucial to the debate that followed. That undamaged fifth made it feasible to rebuild the rest.
By luck, a full archaeological survey had recently been completed, so accurate drawings were available for an authentic rebuild if the National Trust, owners of the barn, and other bodies could be convinced the task was worthwhile. Hundreds of well wishers sent photographs of the barn, hoping they’d provide helpful reference for the reconstruction.
There were three options to consider. Demolition. A partial rebuild. Or total reconstruction. And thank goodness the latter decision was made, though not before a wide-ranging argument that generated almost as much heat as the result of those schoolboys’ fateful fags.
Beams were reused where possible and 298 new oak timbers were replaced, with every joint cut by hand. Some 25,000 Cotswold stone roof slates were found and nailed onto specially cut chestnut rafters. The reconstruction cost £227,000 and was completed on April 18, 1983, three years to the day after the fire.
The flames that devoured most of Bredon’s great barn sparked a debate relevant to all our heritage. It’s a debate that still smoulders. When a historic building is destroyed should we accept that it’s gone, or should we attempt to replicate the past?
This conundrum is explored in a ‘The great barn of Bredon – its fire and reconstruction’, by Freddie Charles, the architect in charge of the rebuilding project.
Whichever school of thought you support, Bredon’s barn is awesome in aspect and well worth a visit. Dating from 1340, it was built for the Bishop of Worcester to store vast volumes of cereal crops from his estate, wheat for bread, barley for beer and oats for horses. In plain figures, the barn is 134 feet long, 44 feet wide and 44 feet high. But mere measurements don’t do this cathedral of agriculture justice at all. Remember, there were no JCBS or Black and Deckers when this was originally built. The most technologically advanced item on-site in 1340 was a mallet. Yet the team of skilled masons, carpenters and slaters completed the soaring structure in two years, being paid threepence a day each for the job. Ancient records tell us the total cost was £50, which was a whole year’s revenue from the Bredon manor estate.
Building stone for the walls came from quarries on Bredon Hill. Oak timbers, a forest’s worth, were transported across the River Severn from Welland. Cotswold stone roofing slates were sourced from 12-milesdistant Snowshill. And lime for the mortar, along with nails for the roof, were bought in Tewkesbury, the nearest town.
Bredon’s is the greatest of six great medieval barns in the Cotswold region, the others being at Bradford on Avon, Frocester, Great Coxwell, Middle Littleton and Leigh Court.
Naturally enough, the bishop wanted someone to keep an eye on the considerable worldly wealth stored in his barn. So his representative, or reeve, had living quarters for himself and his family over one of the two gabled entrances. Pop along for a visit and you can see the fireplace where his wife did the cooking, the stone basin where the family did its washing and the garderobe with a 15ft drop to a pit in which they answered 14th century calls of nature.
Our knowledge of medieval building methods was greatly increased by the reconstruction, knowledge that is now at work in the preservation of ancient buildings elsewhere. So in an odd way the great fire of Bredon barn was a major step forward in the conservation of all our heritage.