Harmondsworth Great Barn

About

Harmondsworth Great Barn (also known as Manor Farm Barn) is a medieval barn on the former Manor Farm in the village of Harmondsworth, in the London Borough of Hillingdon, England. It is north-west of fields and the A4 next to Heathrow Airport. Built in the early 15th century by Winchester College, it is the largest timber-framed building in England and is regarded as an outstanding example of medieval carpentry. It was described by the English poet John Betjeman as the "Cathedral of Middlesex". A similar though smaller barn is part of the Manor Farm complex in Ruislip.

The barn was briefly in royal ownership but passed into the hands of three families who continued to use it for agricultural purposes until as late as the 1970s. It was subsequently owned by a property development company which redeveloped the farm complex. After the company went bankrupt in 2006, the barn was bought by property speculators betting on its compensation value if the nearby Heathrow Airport was expanded. The barn fell into disrepair and was closed to the public for all but one day a year. English Heritage stepped in, using a rare legal procedure to carry out repairs without the owner's consent, and eventually purchased the barn in January 2012. It is now open to the public from April to October on the second and fourth Sunday of each month under the management of the Friends of the Great Barn group.