Tadlow Granary: The Long Journey of a Medieval Survivor
At first glance, it’s easy to pass the small timber building beside Wandlebury House without realising its significance. But the Tadlow Granary, with its weathered oak beams and red-tiled roof, is one of the oldest surviving agricultural buildings in Cambridgeshire.
This modest, beautiful structure tells a story that spans six centuries, two villages, and countless pairs of patient hands.
A Building Born in the Fifteenth Century
Dendrochronology, the scientific dating of timber, places the granary’s construction around 1415, in the reign of Henry V. The oak from which it was made was already mature when felled, which means the story of this building stretches back even further, to trees that sprouted in the late 1300s.
Originally, the granary stood at Tadlow Tower Farm, a few miles west of Cambridge. The farm was part of the Downing Estate, later connected to the founding of Downing College. In its early life, the granary protected the harvest, the life of the village, from damp and vermin, raised high on staddle stones to keep its grain dry.
For centuries, it served its simple but essential purpose. And then, like so many rural buildings, it fell into disuse. By the mid-twentieth century, the farm was being cleared, and the granary stood derelict.
Saved from Disappearance
In 1971, when Tadlow Tower Farm was demolished, a small team from the Cambridge Preservation Society (now Cambridge Past, Present & Future) stepped in to save what they could. The dismantling was filmed by Anglia Television, capturing the moment the granary’s timbers, each one carefully numbered, were lifted from their centuries-old joints.
Those labelled pieces were brought to Wandlebury for safekeeping. For eight years they lay under a tarpaulin, slowly decaying in the elements. When the covering began to rot and the lime plaster between the planks crumbled away, the remaining timbers were finally moved indoors, to what’s now the disabled car park area and later into the “tank room” at Wandlebury House.
By 1980, the decision was made: it was time to rebuild.
An Oak and Iron Puzzle
The cost had risen from the original estimate of £3,000 to £9,000, but there was no more time to lose. Architect Mr Harrison, from the Bromsgrove Museum, was engaged to produce meticulous measured drawings of every surviving timber.
It was painstaking work. Every beam, stud, and brace had to be hauled from storage, examined, drawn, and replaced in exact order. Brian Paddick, then a young architect with Covell Matthews Partnership / John Wheatley Partnership, assisted with the research and documentation, a connection he still remembers with affection today.
Some pieces were missing, the door, parts of the porch, but the team worked from old photographs to recreate them faithfully. It was agreed that any new oak should be left unstained, so visitors could see which parts were original. Not everyone agreed with that choice; one of the team argued passionately that the new timber should be tarred, as the original had been, to ensure its longevity. “The future life of the building would be enhanced by the tar that had served it so well,” he wrote later, a craftsman’s instinct that time would prove correct.
Craftsmanship and Character
Most of the new oak came from Bradfield Wood in Suffolk, and the foreman on the project spent a day there learning the ancient craft of adze work, hand-shaping beams with a curved blade. With “some trepidation”, he passed the skill on to two carpenters, who, it was said, “had a few near misses!” But for first-time adze work, the team agreed they did “a good job of the round oak poles”.
Even the roof became a study in traditional technique. The battens and pegs for the tiles were also made in Suffolk, this time hand-trimmed “properly out”. The roofer, newly promoted to replace his retired mentor, relished the challenge, the complex “lace work” where the porch roof meets the main roof was executed so precisely that few tilers today could replicate it.
Meanwhile, a debate broke out on site about the shape of the oak pegs used to fix the timbers. Round pegs had become common, but one experienced hand objected:
“They should be square, or at most hexagonal. Haven’t you heard the saying about a square peg in a round hole? Everyone quotes it wrong. A square peg in a round hole is the right one for the job — it won’t fall out when the wood shrinks.”
He was proved right again: many of the round pegs later worked loose and had to be replaced.
Matching the granary’s soft red brick piers also took patience. When no suitable reclaimed bricks could be found, new ones were specially made in a Suffolk brick yard, one of the few places still producing traditional handmade clay bricks in the 1980s.
A Visitor from the Past
Not long after the reconstruction was completed, the story appeared in the Cambridge Evening News. Two weeks later, an elderly woman arrived at Wandlebury, asking to see “the building that was once on our farm.”
“She looked at it for a long while,” one of the team recalled, “and said, ‘It looks absolutely splendid. But what a pity you haven’t put it on staddle stones!’”
He explained that none could be found in time, and she smiled. “What a pity I didn’t know such good work was going on, I’d have given you them all. They still line my driveway where I live now.”
That quiet moment, bridging the past and the present, says everything about the story of Tadlow Granary: it’s a story of loss, memory, and care, and of people who step forward when something worth saving might otherwise disappear.
The Granary Today
The reconstructed Tadlow Granary was finally completed in 1982, supervised by R H Partnership Architects with project architect Graham Black. Since then, it has stood quietly beside Wandlebury House, its crown-post roof and oak frame weathering into the landscape.
It’s now used for educational visits and conservation work, but its real significance lies in what it represents: continuity, craftsmanship, and community. Every adzed beam and hand-cut peg embodies the values that Cambridge Past, Present & Future still holds, patience, precision, and respect for the character of place.
For those who worked on it, the granary remains a symbol of what can be achieved when heritage is treated not as nostalgia, but as living responsibility. As Brian Paddick reflected recently:
“It’s heartening to see the granary standing again at Wandlebury, and to think it has found a home among people who value its story. It reminds us how far-sighted it was of the Cambridge Preservation Society to save it.”
A Legacy of Care
Six hundred years after its timbers were first joined, Tadlow Granary endures, not because of grand gestures, but because of the quiet persistence of those who cared. From the farmers who built it, to the volunteers and craftspeople who brought it back to life, it stands as a link in a long chain of stewardship.
Next time you walk past it at Wandlebury, pause for a moment and look closely. You’ll see the mix of old and new, the hand-hewn oak beside the clean edges of later repair, the subtle mismatch in roof tiles, the evidence of hands and minds that refused to let this piece of history vanish.
In that blend of past and present lies the spirit of Cambridge Past, Present & Future: protecting the beauty, history, and wildness of our landscape so it continues to belong to everyone.
