Bastles

The Bastle - from the French “Bastille” [a fortified place] - is the next stage up from the simple cottage and is, in effect, a fortified farmhouse. They proliferate on the English side of the Border and are not as common in Scotland [though they do exist]. One was recently excavated as far north as Crawford in Lanarkshire.

The classic Bastle is a two storey house, maybe 9 metres (30 feet) to 12 metres (40 feet) long by about 6 metres (20 feet) wide. They have thick walls 1 to 1.2 metres (3 to 4 feet) thick with an entrance on the ground floor into a vaulted basement and an entrance at first floor level into the living space for the family occupying the house. Windows are very small or are only arrow-slits or gun ports. The roofs would have been of stone slabs (hipping) to avoid the danger of them being set on fire had thatch been used.

This is Black Middens, near Bellingham in Northumberland, an archetypal Bastle. The stone steps were added in a later period, when the danger of Reiving had passed from the Borderland, as was the ground floor entrance at the bottom of the steps.

Most texts will tell you that entrance to the first floor was via a ladder, which could be pulled up if danger threatened, leaving attackers looking 2 metres (12 feet) up at a closed door. However, this would surely assume that all the inhabitants of the house were capable of climbing a ladder. What about the very old, the very young or the infirm? Possibly a better method would have been that used in a lot of Towers - a forestair. This is a set of wooden stairs which was designed so that it could be collapsed when need be ie if under attack. It would serve as an easy and effective method of ascending for all the house but would leave attackers marooned in the same way as the drawn-up ladder.

A very rough and ready recreated forestair at the castle of Brunequel in France. It is about twice as high as that required for a Bastle. When danger threatened it could be pushed away from the walls by the inhabitants of the house, thus collapsing it.

The exploded diagram of a Bastle, at right, shows the typical arrangement. For a larger image click on the image at right. To return to this page, use your “Back” button.

The lower floor could be used to shelter animals in time of danger or during the worst of the winter weather. The upper floor housed the family.

Animals could be driven through the door in the gable end. The stout door would then be securely locked and the farmer would climb up a ladder through a trap door in the ceiling of the basement room, (sometimes referred to as “a pend”) supposedly drawing up the ladder after him (there’s an awful lot of “drawing up of ladders” going on here).

There are references to some Bastles being grouped together and built so as to be able to give each other supporting fire, as with German Blockhouses in WWI. The village of Haltwhistle was described as having these Bastles. At Black Middens there are the ruins of an 18th Century cottage believed to have been built on the ruins of another Bastle next to the surviving house.