Mysterious Lake District barn joins national treasures on heritage list
It is an elite list with some of the most significant and beautiful buildings and structures in England, including Battersea power station, Middlesbrough’s Transporter Bridge and the London Coliseum.Now the Grade II* landmarks are being joined by a mysterious, limestone rubble “barn” on a grassy knoll in the Lake District, which was most recently used as a shelter for sheep and cows.The Department for Culture, Media and Sport said it was awarding listed status to a building known as Henry’s Castle on the advice of Historic England.Only 5.8% of listed buildings are at grade II* level, meaning they offer “more than special interest”.
Research has revealed that Henry’s Castle has the hallmarks of a high-status building and could date back as far as the 14th century,It has been used as a field barn but what its original purpose was is not known,“Henry’s Castle is one of those rare buildings that raises more questions than it answers,” said Sarah Charlesworth, Historic England’s listing team leader,“This mystery is part of what makes it so compelling,”Rose Lord, built environment adviser at the Lake District national park authority, visited the building in 2022 and, despite its layers of animal manure, knew it was something “very special – I could tell it was definitely more than just a field barn”.
A corbelled (stepped) chimneystack and corbelled garderobe “even in their deteriorating state” suggested there was more to the barn than met the eye, she said.“The inside was plastered and limewashed and you could tell there had been a fire inside … the whole arrangement of fireplaces, windows, doors was something way different to anything I had ever seen.”Archaeologists, architects and conservation engineers have undertaken four years of work to rescue and repair the building.Its most remarkable feature is the oak roof structure – “a precisely hand-finished, chamfered and pegged central truss of a type associated with high-quality carpentry of the 14th or 15th centuries”.Theories on what role it had include being some sort of lookout dwelling with a defensive purpose.
“Was it a hunting lodge for a deer park?” said Lord.“It could have been a very fancy, glamorous summer house that someone used sporadically.”Historic England said that it shared characteristics with bastles – fortified farmhouses common to the Anglo-Scottish borders and built to protect farming families and their livestock from raiders.But, nestled in a valley near Kendal, a half-hour walk from the village of Underbarrow, Henry’s Castle is too far south of the borders to be classified as a bastle.In the 16th or 17th century it was converted to domestic use and by the 19th century it had become a field barn.
It gets its name from a farmer, Henry Willison, who once owned it.Lord said getting such a high listing was the “cherry on the cake” for what had been a “very rewarding” restoration project.“Most buildings which are that significant have already been picked up in previous surveys,” she said.Interpretation panels are to be installed in the coming weeks and a box has been installed in the hope of encouraging owls to set up home
Oil price tops $100 a barrel as US blockades strait of Hormuz; Goldman Sachs posts rise in profits – as it happened
Time to wrap up…Oil prices have jumped back above $100 a barrel and global stocks fell after weekend talks between the US and Iran ended without an agreement and Donald Trump imposed a blockade of the strait of Hormuz.The US president announced the blockade on Sunday, targeting Iranian vessels and ships that have paid a toll to Iran for passage through the strait, in an attempt to choke off the flow of Iranian oil.US Central Command said it would start blocking all Iranian Gulf ports and coastal areas from 3pm UK time, in effect seizing control of maritime traffic in the strait of Hormuz.Trump said on Monday afternoon that ships coming near the blockade would be “eliminated”, warning Iran not to send its “fast attack ships”:double quotation markWarning: If any of these ships come anywhere close to our BLOCKADE, they will be immediately ELIMINATED, using the same system of kill that we use against the drug dealers on boats at Sea. It is quick and brutal
Oil prices top $100 a barrel after talks fail and Trump orders Hormuz blockade
Oil prices jumped back above $100 a barrel and global stocks fell after weekend talks between the US and Iran ended without an agreement and Donald Trump imposed a blockade of the strait of Hormuz.The US president said on Sunday the blockade would target Iranian vessels and ships that have paid a toll to Iran for passage through the strait, in an attempt to choke off the flow of Iranian oil.US Central Command said it would start at 10am ET (5.30pm in Iran and 3pm in the UK) blocking all Iranian Gulf ports and coastal areas, in effect seizing control of maritime traffic in the strait of Hormuz.Trump said on Monday afternoon that ships coming near the blockade would be “eliminated”
Meta creating AI version of Mark Zuckerberg so staff can talk to the boss
If you are one of Meta’s almost 79,000 employees and cannot get hold of the boss, do not worry. The owner of Facebook and Instagram is reportedly working on an AI version of Mark Zuckerberg who can answer all your queries.The AI clone of Zuckerberg, Meta’s founder and chief executive, is being trained on his mannerisms and tone as well as his public statements and thoughts on company strategy.The rationale behind the project, according to the Financial Times, is that employees could feel more connected to one of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley.The Meta chief has a history of creating and experimenting with digitalised versions of himself
Elon Musk’s X cuts payments to users who post clickbait
Elon Musk’s X has reduced payments to users who post clickbait and recycle news stories as it warned account holders against “flooding the timeline” with low-quality content.Nikita Bier, X’s head of product, wrote on the social media platform that all “aggregators” – users who quickly repackage and repost news from other accounts – had received less money from the creator revenue sharing programme.Under the scheme, X gives a share of advertising revenue to creators who have at least 500 verified followers and generate at least 5m views over a three-month period. Bier wrote that aggregators had their payouts reduced by 60% and that total will be reduced by a further 20%.“It became abundantly clear: flooding the timeline with 100 stolen reposts and clickbait everyday crowded out real creators and hurt new author growth,” he wrote
Surrey v Leicestershire, Notts v Glamorgan, and more: county cricket, day four – live
Kevin Howells says there will be play at Canterbury…Handshakes at The Oval.The Oval: Surrey 520 and 263-4 DRAW with Leicestershire 691Surrey 14 points;Leicestershire 15 pointsAnd then there were two. Canterbury, where its raining; and The Oval where its not.A pitch inspection due at Canterbury at 4.45, which is about when they’ll shake hands at The Oval, Surrey 234-5, Pope 69 not out
Key gambling reform campaigner calls for pause to controversial affordability checks
Dr James Noyes, one of the key early advocates of affordability checks for online gamblers, has joined calls for Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, to instruct the Gambling Commission to pause the implementation of checks “until there has been adequate evaluation and scrutiny” of a pilot scheme to assess how checks might work in practice.Noyes’s intervention in the long-running debate over affordability checks comes in an open letter sent to Nandy on Monday. It echoes similar calls for a halt to the process by many senior figures in the racing industry, which fears a disproportionate effect on racing bettors with the potential to cost the industry tens of millions of pounds in income if punters refuse to supply financial information to gambling operators and switch to the black market instead.Noyes says in his letter that while affordability checks were “a worthy idea in principle” when first proposed in 2020, his call for checks was made on the basis “a gambling ombudsman would be created to ensure proper treatment of consumer redress and rights”, “checks would be non-intrusive” and “while preventing serious cases of harm from happening, they would not impede the majority of gamblers from engaging in a lawful activity which involves inherent risk, economic agency and their own money”.Noyes, a senior fellow of the Social Market Foundation (SMF) thinktank, argued for the introduction of affordability checks in their reports published in 2020 and 2021 and a number of his proposals were included in a government white paper on gambling reform, which was published in April 2023
Dr TikTok: patients diagnose chronic illnesses with anonymous commenters’ help
AI companies know they have an image problem. Will funding policy papers and thinktanks dig them out?
‘Too powerful for the public’: Inside Anthropic’s bid to win the AI publicity war
‘It has your name on it, but I don’t think it’s you’: how AI is impersonating musicians on Spotify
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s home targeted with molotov cocktail
Amazon to finally launch Leo satellite internet in ‘mid-2026’, says CEO