As many will be heading to Christmas Parties at Knebworth Barns this month, I thought it would be an appropriate month to follow the recent advice of a kind reader and relate the history of the two original Barns, for those too young to remember or who have moved to Knebworth since the early 1970s. “Move tithe barns to make a restaurant” was the second on a long list of tasks my mother and father scribbled out in 1970 to be completed before the opening of Knebworth Park the following spring, after “Build the new drive off the motorway” and “Build a kitchen and loo block”. Their priority was a catering facility that looked in keeping with the park, and two 400-year-old barns that were part of Manor Farm and Lodge Farm were chosen to be given a new life.
Lodge Barn was dismantled and rebuilt on the new site. Manor Barn, however, was jacked up on sixteen huge wheels and pulled by a steam traction engine two-thirds of a mile across the park. It was the largest building every to be moved intact in England. It was meant to take five days – it took five weeks. My mother recalls, “Charlie, the driver of the traction engine pulling the barn, regularly got bored and disappeared to ‘his office’ – his name for The Lytton Arms. When all was ready he had to be extracted from the pub and guided back to the engine. On the first pull, the engine went backwards instead of the barn going forwards. But it got there in the end, and not a single tile fell off the roof!”
In 1973 you could get a four-course lunch or dinner there, “including coffee”, for £2.50 – it is a little more today, but still a unique and historic environment, and scene of many happy weddings, parties and community events. Thanks Charlie! It was worth the puff!
Henry Lytton Cobbold
www.knebworthhouse.com
