Bastles and Bastle-Like Buildings in Allendale, Northumberland

Abstract

Twenty years after the R.C.H.M. volume Shielings and Bastles drew attention to the survival of many bastles, thick-walled defensible upper-floor houses of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, characteristic of the Anglo-Scottish Border. Recent fieldwork in Northumberland has shown that bastles (the earliest vernacular house type to survive in any numbers within the county) also exist in considerable numbers in some areas slightly further afield, and notably in Allendale, to the south of the Tyne. Seven Allendale bastles or bastle-derivative houses are described in detail, and another twenty-seven listed in a gazetteer. The origins of bastles are discussed, and some possible medieval antecedents suggested; the fabric and morphology of the buildings are then considered, and various groupings—such as ‘extended bastles’ and groups around a common yard—examined. The continuance of the bastle tradition is seen in bastle-derivative houses of the later seventeenth century; the date at which conventional ground-floor houses were re-established varies from valley to valley.