Like its cousin at Frocester Court, the great barn at Hartpury was built for St. Peter’s Abbey in Gloucester. Although it has seen much rebuilding and repair since, it was originally built in the fifteenth century.
It is a stone barn of 11 bays with two porches on the south side. The upper parts of most of the trusses appear to have been replaced in the eighteenth century although some of the collar beams and braces may be original, along with one truss to the right of the eastern porch. The roof was retiled in the nineteenth century when the barn was converted to a cow house. It is still in agricultural use. On the day I visited, the farmer’s long horn cattle were using it to shelter from the heat of the sun.
