Taxed Crops Collected in Medieval Tithe Barn

News August 6, 2013

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SOUTHAM, ENGLAND—The limestone-brick foundations of a medieval tithe barn have been uncovered in a park in Warwickshire. Farmers were required to pay a tenth of their produce as a tax to the church, in this case the Coventry Priory, which was then stored in the tithe barn. The walls and doors would have been made of oak and roofed with tile. “Tithe barns played a significant part in medieval life and the Southam barn would have been an important prominent building in the town. It is not known when or why the barn went out of use and was demolished, but the earliest maps from the late eighteenth century show no buildings on this part of the site,” said archaeologist Andrew Mann.

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