A rapid historic buildings assessment of the great barns at Cornham and Honeymead was undertaken in 2021-2023. In 1819 John Knight embarked on the reclamation,
enclosure, and improvement of the Royal Forest of Exmoor. He established new farmsteads of Cornham and Honeymead and furnished them with farmhouses and farm buildings. A feature of both farms is a Great Barn, long twostorey buildings flanked (or formerly so) by single-storey open-sided aisles. The measured survey of these two barns indicates they are almost identical and were built to a common design. The original purpose of these buildings remains to be determined but the storage and perhaps drying of fodder crops would appear most likely. The open-sided aisles would have been cattle sheds, and the compact, nuclear form of the structure saved money on its construction and reduced the carriage distance between store and animal. However, those economies were at the expense of efficiency, as due to the aisles all goods had to be carried into the building via the gable doors, and in both instances there was a separate waterpowered threshing barn. Both structures were subsequently much altered to suit changing need, and this presumably indicates that either these buildings did not function as intended, or else the original function was sufficiently different to later use (under Frederic Knight) to require those changes. Cornham barn still forms part of the working farm, albeit much reduced and with the loss of both aisles. Honeymead barn is in better overall condition but is either redundant or turned to alternative uses. Taken together, the Great Barns illustrate the driving ambition and aspiration of John Knight’s ‘Exmoor Experiment’ and are the largest and most enigmatic buildings to survive from this phase of reclamation within the former Royal Forest.
Age: of its time.
Rarity: farmhouse and buildings from the Knight era are largely lost other than the barn which is highly distinctive identical design to Cornham.
Distinctive Design: farmstead is typical of Knights but form and function is unusual.
Historical Association: known occupants and links to Knight estate.
Evidential Value: more intact than Cornham barn, retains one aisle and first floor.
Social Communal Value: well known farmstead but other than barn much altered
Group Value: other earlier buildings lost
Collective Value: with other buildings as part of Knight estate.