Our friend and neighbour was clearing some old paperwork when she chanced on the notice of sale for the barn at The Gables, dated 2001.  She thought that we would like to have the papers and she was correct.  The plot is listed as “Barn and hovels” which, when we inherited them with the property, is really the best way to describe the one storey buildings in the courtyard.  They were well worth restoring and remodelling and when people ask what they were like before we undertook the project I can now say they were “hovels” – rat infested hovels too!