The Barn: The Lives, Landscape & Lost Ways.., S Coulthard 1st Edition

Condition Report: New: A brand-new, unread and professionally handled book. Carefully preserved from publication to purchase, these books are offered in the best attainable condition. This grade applies to recently published titles that have not entered long-term storage.

Catalogue Note:A pristine copy of Sally Coulthard’s absorbing socio-historic exploration of the English countryside. Renowned for her beautifully researched histories of rural mainstays—including sheep, bees, and hedgehogs—Coulthard uses an ancient stone barn in North Yorkshire’s Howardian Hills as a micro-lens to view centuries of agricultural history. Critics have universally praised its warm tone and meticulous research, with Country Walking Magazine noting it "shows us the beauty and rich history of everyday things" and Waterstones hailing it as "a masterwork of research and non-fiction storytelling." This unread, untouched copy is an excellent addition for collectors of modern nature writing, British social history, and rural topography.

Across the muddy foldyard from Sally Coulthard's North Yorkshire farmhouse stands a large and ancient stone-built barn. When she discovered a set of protective 'witches' marks' scratched into one of its internal plaster walls to ward off evil spirits, she began to wonder about the ordinary people who had lived, laughed, and sweated there across the centuries. The Barn chronicles the intimate biography of this single building and its surrounding hinterland from the eighteenth-century Enclosures right up to the Second World War. Coulthard shows how massive, unstoppable forces of agriculture, technology, industrialization, and religion were played out in miniature within this hidden corner of rural Britain. It is a deeply affectionate, revelatory celebration of a vanished way of life and the lasting charm of rural Yorkshire.