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28 C O N T E X T 1 7 9 : M A R C H 2 0 2 4 on pivots or harrs, just like the gates of Roman forts. A similar door on the first floor provided human access; originally it might have been gained by a ladder, which could be pulled up after use, but as times quietened down external stone stairs became the norm. A handful of more superior bastles had a stone barrel vault over their byres, but the majority settled for close-set oak beams carry- ing a floor of stone flags, which was almost as fireproof. Bastles were designed to withstand a midnight raid, not a military siege, and one of the raiders’ prime weapons was fire. To counter this, the byre doorways of some bastles had a small opening above, a ‘quenching hole’, communicating with a first-floor recess. If the sound of crackling and smell of smoke revealed unwelcome visitors with incendiary plans, water could be poured from inside. On the upper floor might be one or two rooms, heated by end-wall fireplaces and perhaps provided with a mural recess with a slop stone, the bastle equivalent of a kitchen sink. There would be a trapdoor in the floor, so that whoever had the duty of lock- ing the beasts in the byre – the drawbar could only be drawn from the inside – could squeeze up to join the family above. There might be a sleeping loft in the attic. Bastle roofs rarely survive. Occasionally there might have been a stone top-vault (one survives at Snabdaugh, high on the North Tyne) but more usually either simple principal rafter trusses or upper crucks carried either stone slates or heather thatch. The latter might seem unlikely due to its perceived flammable nature, but it has been argued that historic heather roofs, unlike their modern counterparts, were kept damp and were very much ‘a peat bog on a slope’, thus posing less of a risk. Bastles appear quite suddenly in history at about the time of the Union of the Crowns (1603), just when one might expect more peace- ful conditions to become the norm. Before bastles, we know that stout timber houses were popular, as well as the traditional medieval long houses. There are a few later medieval buildings that one can see as ‘proto-bastles’, simple upper-floor houses with vaulted base- ments. Two good examples, both in County Durham, are Pockerley (now aggrandised to ‘Pockerley Manor’ and forming part of the North of England Open Air Museum at Beamish, although unlike the other exhibits it was always there) and Baal Hill House at Wolsingham. A few bastles are dated, usually on their door heads. Denton Foot (1594), not far south of the Wall in Cumbria, may be the earliest. Others are in the early 1600s. They seem to have been distinguished as ‘stone houses’ at the time; they were also known as ‘strong houses’ and ‘peels’. The present name, linked to the French ‘bastile’, was occasionally used as well, but only recently became generic. Most stood alone, but some formed clusters, as at Chesterwood and Wall in Tynedale, the latter which had a large green partly at least surrounded by terraces of bastles. Perhaps animals were brought onto the green at night, unless real danger threatened, when they could be secreted in the bastles. Evistones, a now- abandoned village high in Redesdale, had a mixture of bastles and long houses and Housty in Allendale, where a couple of ruined bastles survive, may have been similar. In contrast to their appearance, bastles seem to fade out gradually. In most areas by around 1650, people were thinking it safe enough to come down and live at ground level once more, although around Alston, in the South Tyne valley on the boundary of Northumberland and Cumbria, folk lived upstairs until the later 1700s. Old maps show the town once had doz- ens of houses with external stairs. Many were not really defensible but the basement byres and stone slab floors persisted. Perhaps the primitive central heating provided by a byre full of warm animals underfoot remained attractive during Pennine winters. If one wants to see a bastle, one can do no better than make the pilgrimage to Black Middens, with which this article began. A mile or two before one passes through the hamlet of Gatehouse which has several examples, and beyond the signposted Tarset Bastle Trail, the road will take you to the ruins of Shilla Hill and Boghead, which has a good quenching hole. In the Upper Coquet valley is Woodhouses Black Middens: the archetypal bastle with the original byre entrance in the gable end. The side wall ground floor door is a late insertion, and the stone stair probably an older addition.

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