MysteryLegendary
The Mayflower's Bones
Did the Pilgrim Fathers' ship end its days as a Chiltern barn?
Private, don't visit
- What's there
- Private 17th-century timber barn on the Old Jordans estate
- Legend from
- 1920
- Tone
- Curious
Near Jordans stands an old barn with a big claim: some say its beams once sailed to America with the Pilgrim Fathers.
Behind Old Jordans, the Quaker farmhouse near Chalfont St Giles, stands a 17th-century timber barn. Since 1920 it has been claimed that its beams came from the Mayflower, the ship that carried the Pilgrim Fathers to America in 1620. The idea was championed by the Quaker scholar James Rendel Harris, who said he first heard the tale from a stranger at a funeral, and it caught the public imagination on both sides of the Atlantic. Pieces of timber were given to America, and wood from the rafters was used for a medal Churchill gave Roosevelt. It was listed for its age, not the ship.