2023 · Petworth, West Sussex
Church Lane Barn, Petworth
- Client
- Private — owner
- Era
- 17th century
- Listing
- Grade II
- Category
- Oak frame
- Completion
- 2023
- Disciplines
- Oak frame conservation · Horsham slab roofing · Peg-fixed joinery
Image · Hero · Project 678
An eighteenth-century threshing barn converted for occasional family use, retaining the entire original oak frame and the Horsham slab roof. All new joinery is green oak, peg-fixed, removable in 200 years by a careful conservator.
Church Lane Barn is one of the few remaining threshing barns in the Rother valley that still has its original Horsham slab roof intact. The slabs — thick sandstone tiles quarried in the nearby Horsham area — are heavy, irregular, and irreplaceable once broken. Each weighs between 20 and 40 kilograms.
Our brief was to stabilise the frame, replace three failing oak tie beams, and insulate the space sympathetically for occasional winter use. We used green oak for the new tie beams, mortice-and-tenon jointed and pegged with dry oak dowels. No steel, no adhesive, no hidden modern fixings. In 200 years a future craftsman can unpeg our work and remove it without damaging anything original.
The insulation strategy was hempcrete to the internal face of the gable ends, left exposed as a warm textured surface. The floor is reclaimed elm over limecrete on a breathable build-up. The Horsham slabs were numbered, lifted for the roof carpentry repairs, and re-laid in the original sequence.
“Every fixing we use is a promise to the next carpenter who opens this up. We try to leave them a gift, not a puzzle.”
Credits
- Project lead
- Ben Fairweather
- Oak frame
- Ben Fairweather, Rob Penfold
- Roofing
- Tom Holloway, Jake Stanmer
- Hempcrete
- Martha Greene
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