The Tithe Barn
Built on the foundations of an earlier monastic barn belonging to the nuns of the Benedictine Abbey of Polesworth, the tithe barn has stood on the Hall Court site for over three hundred years. The first documented mention of the building is in the 1655 will of Sir Francis Nethersole, Lord of the Manor of Polesworth. In it, he describes the Barn as being "newly erected"; however, no evidence for the actual date of its erection has thus far been uncovered.
From Sir Francis's death, in 1659, until the abolition of the tithe system in 1836, Polesworth's tithes were stored in the tithe barn. Dating from the Middle Ages, the tithes were a local tax in kind, collected for the parish church to support the incumbent cleric (a tenth of farm produce was gathered annually, the word "tithe" coming from the Old English teogotha, meaning tenth). In addition to maintaining the post of vicar at the Abbey Church, the Polesworth tithes also financed the Nethersole school.
In 1912, Sir George Chetwynd, the then Lord of the Manor, put the Hall Court site (including the tithe barn) up for sale. A consortium of local gentlemen, realising the significance of the site to the village, stepped in and bought the area before it was put up for auction.
In July of 1946, the Hall Court site was purchased by Polesworth Parish Council for £900. But, despite new owners, the tithe barn suffered a slow decline in its fortunes over the next fifty years. A stable before the Second World War, it was employed as housing for evacuated families during the 1940s. Later it became a builder's store, whilst, in the early 1980s, it was a base for a Youth Training Scheme project.
A Grade II listed building since 1968, the barn had deteriorated into a state of near collapse by the end of the 1980s – the structure was still standing only thanks to scaffolding. "Dangerous Building" signs were also posted around it by the Parish Council.
In 1993/94, a radical restoration programme was carried out on the barn. Called, naturally enough, the Polesworth Project, it was partly funded by grants from the European Commission, the tithe barn was completely rebuilt and converted into a community resource centre. Renamed "The Tithe Barn Resource Centre", the building was reopened in July, 1995, and is now used for a wide variety of community, civic and business activities.
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For more information on the Polesworth Project, visit The Tithe Barn Resource Centre web site.