The Tithe Barn and the abbey ruins

Orc, a thegn of King Cnut, and his wife Tola founded a Benedictine abbey here in the 1040s, and for five hundred years Abbotsbury was a monastery with a village attached. Around 1400 the monks built the barn to hold the rents that were paid in grain. It is 272 feet long and 31 wide, 23 bays, the largest thatched tithe barn in the world, and it is still standing at the bottom of Church Street.

The abbey was surrendered to Henry VIII's commissioners on 12 March 1539 and most of it went into the walls of the village. What is left: a piece of what may have been the abbot's lodging beside the church, 13th and 14th century, in the care of English Heritage; Pynion End, the tall gable with the diagonal buttresses behind the church, built about 1400; two medieval stone coffins in the churchyard; and the arch of the inner gatehouse by the road on Church Street. Abbey House next door is 17th century with carved stones from the 12th century abbey built into it, and it does bed and breakfast and lunches.

The abbey remains are free and open any reasonable time in daylight. The barn is now an events space run by the Ilchester Estate, used for the Abbey Farm Christmas Fair, a flower festival, theatre and exhibitions, and hired for weddings, so an event is your chance to stand under the roof; the rest of the time you see it from the lane, the churchyard and Abbey Farm next door, where there is a café. Park in the village car park off Rodden Row, DT3 4JL, and walk down Church Street, three minutes.

Look for bits of the abbey in the village walls as you go; a good many cottages have a carved stone in them somewhere. From the top of Chapel Hill the barn, the church and the ruins line up in one view.

English Heritage, Abbotsbury Abbey remains, The barn as a venue, Five hundred years of monks