Barns, granaries and security: crop storage, processing and investment in medieval England.

Increased storage capacity was an essential part of demesne farming in England, as many surviving barns indicate. Their size facilitated their use also as winter workplaces for threshing grain and pulses. Another use, although undocumented, was probably wool storage. Church estates in particular invested in them, but the later Middle Ages saw many, mostly smaller, barns built by prospering tenant farmers. They therefore had considerable social as well as commercial significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]