Tithe Barn - Mill Street, Maidstone, UK
N 51° 16.277 E 000° 31.322
31U E 327149 N 5682910
The Tithe Barn was built for the Archbishops' Palace that is a short distance away. It was later used as the palace's stables and today is the home of the Museum of Carriages.
Waymark Code: WMR83T
Location: South East England, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 05/25/2016
Views: 1
Wikipedia has an article about the Tithe Barn that advises:
The Tithe Barn in Maidstone, Kent, is a large two-storey stone building on the east side of Mill Street. It was constructed in the 14th century as a tithe barn for the nearby Archbishop's Palace and was later used as the palace's stables. The barn is a Grade I listed building and a scheduled monument. It is home to the Tyrwhitt-Drake Museum of Carriages.
The barn is constructed of roughly coursed rag-stone rubble walls in six buttressed bays. The west façade features a projecting two-storey half-timbered porch with stone ground floor construction and brick infilling at first floor level between the timber framing. The building has multiple doorways at both levels on the west façade with many small windows at high level and external stone steps leading up to the first floor of the porch. The tiled roof is of crown post construction and is hipped at both ends with a gable over the porch.
The Tyrwhitt-Drake Museum of Carriages was established by Mayor of Maidstone Sir Garrard Tyrwhitt-Drake who amassed the collection of horse-drawn vehicles in the first part of the 20th century. The museum opened in 1946 and was the first carriage museum in Britain. Among its collection of 60 vehicles are sedan chairs and Queen Victoria's state landau.
The Museum is open from May to September each year on Wednesdays to Sundays and bank holidays.
The Tithe Barn is a Grade I listed building with the entry at the Historic England website telling us:
A large C14 Tithe barn which was subsequently used as the stables of the Archbishop's Palace. It is now the Maidstone Corporation Carriage Museum. 2 storeys stone rubble. Hipped tiled roof, 6 bays with a buttress between each. The east front has 6 small narrow windows on each floor. The west front has 5 obtusely-pointed doorways (2 of them larger than the others) and a 2-storeyed porch in the centre. The ground floor of the porch is of stone. Its 1st floor is timbered with modern brick infilling and projects on the protruding ends of the floor joists and brackets. It has a double loft door with a flight of stone steps leading up to it on the north side of the porch and a gable over. The west front also has 5 small windows on the 1st floor and one other doorway. Crown-post roof inside.