Reputedly the birthplace of William Caxton, the house was later the home of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson.

Long Barn is thought to date in part from the mid-fourteenth century, at which time this substantial house was divided into farm workers' accommodation.

[1] By the nineteenth century it had been restored and extended by the addition of a long barn, hence the name of the house, which was moved to the site from the field below.

Restoration work was started by the Thompsons and later continued by the diplomat Harold Nicolson and his wife, writer Vita Sackville-West, who lived there until 1931.

[3] The Bloomsbury Group often met at Long Barn, and visitors included Virginia Woolf, Stephen Spender, Clive Bell, Lytton Strachey, E. M. Forster, Hugh Walpole, and others such as Roy Campbell, Rosamund Grosvenor (Vita's childhood lover), Violet Trefusis, Charlie Chaplin, and Douglas Fairbanks.