Hollybush Farm Bastle

Description

Bastle house, late C16 or early C17, altered late C17 or C18, now agricultural store, and adjoining barn of early C19. Rubble, long roughly-shaped quoins, C20 asbestos roof. 2 storeys and attic, 2 bays. Off-centre late C17 blocked door with chamfered jambs and remains of inscribed or dated panel on lintel; to right a boarded door in raised tooled surround, to left a decayed 12-pane sash. 1st floor has 16-pane sash and small 6-pane fixed light; low window to attic just below eaves. To right adjacent barn has door with alternating jambs and pitching door over, slate roof. Right return of bastle, inside barn, has central blocked doorway with roughly 4-centred chamfered arch and drawbar tunnel. Rear elevation shows 1st floor window with recessed wood frame carrying stout iron bars, and to right projecting stone spout. Interior has various C18 features including fireplaces and stair. Heavy central roof truss with re-set collar. Formerly known as Water Holme Garth. (Listed Building Report)

The bastle measures 8.5m by 6.4m externally, with walls of thinly coursed sandstone rubble, with elongate roughly shaped quoins; the side walls are 0.8m thick and the end walls c.1m. A low second floor has been added, in slightly better squared stone; the roof is now of relatively shallow pitch but the steeper pitch of the original can just be traced in the west gable. The original byre entrance doorway is set in the centre of the east end and is now visible as a recess inside the adjacent farmbuilding. It has an elliptical arch and is now plastered over, concealing the drawbar tunnel in the north jamb. The present doorway is at the east end of the south wall, and has a raised surround of tooled stone; immediately to the west is an earlier square headed doorway, now blocked; fragments of a lintel inscription of later 17th century character (raised letters in sunk rectangular panels) were visible in 1984 but have now been erased by erosion; further west is a window opening of 19th century date. There also appears to have been a doorway at the east end of the north wall, now visible internally as a recess, with a small window inserted in the blocking. Since 1984 another doorway, set at the north end of the east wall and opening into the farmbuilding, has been walled up. The first floor ceiling beams are of quite light scantling. At first floor level an internal recess appears to mark the position of the upper doorway of the bastle, east of centre in the south wall; externally it is only visible as an ill defined area of rubble patching. There is a small window at the east end of the wall, and a larger sash window further west. Near the east end of the north wall is an older window with a heavy wooden frame and iron bars; east of this is a projecting stone spout. The present roof has a principal rafter truss with a collar, made up of older timbers reused.
The Hollybush bastle is a little unusual in that its walls are of quite small rubble, and relatively thin for this type of building. It would appear to have undergone at least two remodellings, the first late in the 17th or early in the 18th century, and the second around a hundred years later. The blocked ground floor doorway on the south dates to the first, whilst most of the internal features, the second floor and the present roof structure relate to the second (Ryder 1994-5). (Northumberland HER)