The Barn by Sally Coulthard

Across the muddy foldyard from Sally Coulthard's farmhouse, in the Howardian Hills of Yorkshire, stands a large, ancient, stone barn.

When she discovered a set of witches' marks, scratched into the plaster to ward off evil spirits and bring good luck, Sally became curious about the lives of the people who had lived and worked there in times past. Her investigation revealed both an intimate history of a family, a house and its hinterland, and a picture of shifting patterns of work, leisure and domestic life across two-and-a-half centuries of English history.