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"The tithe-barn stands in the rectory paddock as it has since medieval days. It was recently sold as a house but apart from the insertion of windows the structure remains the same. It is smaller than southern tithe-barns yet in 1806 the tithe value was estimated as £2,000 a year. Shortly after this the great parish was divided into seven and to-day, after numerous sales of glebe-land, only some twenty acres remain.

Now happily the ancient system of tithe-rents no longer exists. Ever since Anglo-Saxon days the tithe collection had been an unhappy cause of friction and bitterness between parson and people, a tenth of all produce being levied in kind on the tenant farmers, who had to bring their tithe to the rector's barn.

The old harvest song: 'We've cheated the parson, we'll cheat him again, For why should the vicar have one in ten?' shows how incompatible such a system was with the spiritual care of a pastor for his flock."

Text from The Great Parish of Simonburn from Hadrian's Wall to Carter Bar: An Historical Guide by Cecil Dickson Ward Davis (1972).