The historic Croxley Great Barn in All Saints Road, Croxley Green, will be treated to some tender, loving, care next week when up to 40 conservation experts and volunteer heritage enthusiasts descend upon it to carry out much-needed maintenance and repairs.

The working party has been organised by the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) who will spend a week working on the barn which has survived since medieval times.

This year’s work will be part-funded by a Sharing Heritage grant of £4,100 from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Each year SPAB, Britain’s oldest conservation body founded by William Morris in 1877, decamps for a week from its London HQ to put its advice and expertise into practice at a building in need.

This is the second year the society has held its working party at Croxley Great Barn and this time around they will be opening the site up to the local community.

Visitors will be welcome to watch conservation in action at the barn from 10am until 5pm on Wednesday (July 2).

Some of the best craftspeople in the country will be on hand to teach visitors brick-making, flint knapping, stone masonry and wood work skills. There will also be historic tours of the barn at 10am, noon, 2pm and 4pm. Access to the barn by car is via Lavrock Lane.

Croxley Great Barn is a hidden medieval monastic barn built at the end of the 14th century.

Remarkably unchanged in 700 years, it is one of the largest of its type in Hertfordshire - standing approximately 31m in length and 12m wide.

The barn’s soaring space and arching beams give it the appearance of a wooden cathedral. This is appropriate, given that it was probably built for Abbott John Moote of St Albans Abbey.