ABSTRACT
An increased demand for housing is being followed by a scarcity of premises suitable for conversion to workplaces. One factor in rural building demands great restraint on the part of the modern improver. This chapter talks about the virtual mania to convert farm buildings, and especially the grain-storage and threshing barn which has always been the most impressive type, into homes or other new uses. The contractor chosen was one of the few in the country with recent experience on a comparable building Bakers of Danbury had just completed work on Grange Barn at Coggeshall. Peter McCurdy describes the medieval Harmondsworth barn as being not only full to the brim with produce and labour like a combined factory floor and storehouse, but as also having a second function to subdue by its bulk and manifest order one of the most notoriously rebellious and litigious manorial holdings in England at a time of class warfare and social change.
