CERNE ABBEY BARX. 191 



Archaeological Association Journal of 1872. It is said in Hutchins, 

 and in my childhood I often heard it from my Cerne Abbas nurse, 

 that the barn before the house was established in part of it held all 

 the corn in straw off a farm of 800 acres. Therefore, it would 

 hold the tithe corn off 8,000 acres, more than 12 square miles. 

 Now, on an average, the Cerne Abbas valley may, I think, be set 

 down as a mile wide. If so, twelve square miles of it mean land 

 stretching six miles each way. We must suppose some of the 

 tithe corn to have been carted all that distance, on mediaeval 

 trackways, if the monks used as a tithe barn the building which 

 we see, and not also the five other bays which may have existed. 

 And, again, this estimate allows, what is at best most doubtful, 

 that all those twelve miles of valley were tithable to the Abbey. 

 It may be objected that I am forgetting the neighbouring downs, 

 most of which show plough marks. Not so ; but I submit that 

 the cropping there was only at long intervals the tithing from 

 them very small. It would probably only bring up the crop and 

 tithes of the down plus valley, in the middle ages, to the modern 

 amount from the valley alone. No ; with all diffidence I submit 

 that here and at Abbotsbury and other monastic barns we see the 

 store-houses not of tithe corn only, but also of the crop itself off 

 the home farms of the convents. The Benedictine rule enjoined 

 manual labour. I cannot but think that in that pleasant Cerne 

 Abbas Yale the fathers had a goodly farm in hand, and did a small 

 stroke of work on it while overseeing the lay brothers and others 

 making longer days, as less taken up with matins and vespers, 

 compline and lauds. Yes, when looking at that stately South 

 porch, I sometimes have seemed to see a rough picturesque wain 

 rolling in, high-loaded with ruddy wheat, its warm hue throwing 

 into strong relief a black frocked farmer monk, with pitchfork on 

 shoulder, going to help stow the corn from the Barton Farm tilled 

 by the retainers, lay brothers, and adscripti glebse, of the great 

 Benedictine House of Cerne Abbas. 



