“The Barns, 5 Village Road, Oxton”

Oxton Barns sits within a rich piece of local history, once closely connected to the Thomas family - a highly respected name in Oxton’s building and contracting trade during the 19th century. Their work helped shape the village as we know it today, contributing to landmark buildings such as St Saviour’s Church and the Conservative Club on Village Road, alongside many of the surrounding homes.

In the mid-1800s, Oxton was a place of remarkable growth and craftsmanship. Skilled stonemasons were in constant demand, working with the very sandstone the village stands upon. Supporting them was a network of “stone getters,” who quarried and transported stone across the area using horse and cart.

Oxton Barns played an important role in this bustling industry. It is believed the site housed a weighbridge, where each load of stone was measured before payment - an essential part of the trade at the time. This would have made the barns a hub of daily activity, with carts arriving and departing as Oxton steadily expanded.

As building methods evolved and brick became more widely used towards the late 19th century, the need for stone gathering declined. The weighbridge gradually fell out of use, and the role of the barns began to shift. Over the years, the buildings are thought to have served a variety of purposes - from storage of materials and horses, to later housing engineering works and, more recently, a local motor garage.

The physical landscape still holds subtle traces of this past. The curved wall at the junction of Willan Street and Fairclough Lane, for example, was shaped by the repeated turn of heavy carts -designed to protect the stonework from damage as they passed through.

The weighbridge itself remained in place well into modern times, before being removed during renovations in the early 2000s. A small office once stood alongside it, where records of deliveries were kept - another quiet reminder of the site’s working past.