This paper seeks to examine the origins of the Jacobean Great Barn at Vaynol Park in North Wales. The evidence suggests that this barn was built to represent the status and ambitions of the owner of the Vaynol Estate in 1605. However, the barn itself poses questions about the finances of the Caernarfonshire gentry and the state of local agriculture at that time. By relating the study of its physical form to the social and economic context in which it was built, the threads of evidence create a picture of an expanding estate and substantial seventeenth-century Home Farm.