Little Bavington Tower (The Gatehouse Record)

Also known as, or recorded in historical documents as;
Bavington Hall; Babington

In the civil parish of Bavington.
In the historic county of Northumberland.
Modern Authority of Northumberland.
1974 county of Northumberland.
Medieval County of Northumberland.

OS Map Grid Reference: NY989786
Latitude 55.10302° Longitude -2.01448°

Little Bavington Tower has been described as a probable Pele Tower.

There are no visible remains.

This is a Grade 2* listed building protected by law*.

Description

The present house was probably built or begun by Admiral George Delval who purchased the estate in 1719/20. Previous to this it belonged to the Shafto family who had been connected with Little Bavington since the 13th.c.
The main structure is oblong in plan with a wing projecting from the NE corner. In the angle formed between the main building and the wing, a low brick building of two stories is enclosed, which appears to be of an earlier period (Hodgson 1897).
The main portion of Bavington Hall appears to be 18c. and displays no evidence of an earlier structure other than the "low brick building" referred to by Hodgson, the brickwork of this feature is early but no dateable architectural details are visible (F1 FDC 13.4.56). (PastScape)

(Marginal) A tower at 'Babington' occurs in a list of Border fortalices of 1415. (Location is attributed to Little Bavington, NY 989786) (Hodgson 1897).
There are no traces or surviving tradition of a tower at Little Bavington (F1 BHP 02-AUG-1967).
Little Bavington Tower. The present hall may stand on the site of the tower (Long 1967). (Northumberland HER)

Sources of information, references and further reading

National Heritage List for England Listed Building number(s) 1044929
Historic England (PastScape) Defra or Monument number(s) 18842; 18798.
County Historic Environment Record (or Sites and Monuments Record) number(s) N9248.

Websites (Gatehouse is not responsible for the content of external websites.)
- Wikipedia entry
Books
- Dodds, John F., 1999, Bastions and Belligerents (Newcastle upon Tyne: Keepdate Publishing) p. 32-3
  Salter, Mike, 1997, The Castles and Tower Houses of Northumberland (Malvern: Folly Publications) p. 115 (slight)
  King, D.J.C., 1983, Castellarium Anglicanum (London: Kraus) Vol. 2 p. 345
  Graham, Frank, 1976, The Castles of Northumberland (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Frank Graham) p. 227
  Long, B., 1967, Castles of Northumberland (Newcastle-upon-Tyne) p. 132
  Harvey, Alfred, 1911, Castles and Walled Towns of England (London: Methuen and Co)
  Hodgson, John Crawford (ed), 1897, Northumberland County History (Newcastle-upon-Tyne) Vol. 4 p. 414 online copy
  Bates, C.J., 1891, Border Holds of Northumberland (London and Newcastle: Andrew Reid) p. 16 (Also published as the whole of volume 14 (series 2) of Archaeologia Aeliana view online)
Periodical Articles
- Bates, C.J., 1891, 'Border Holds of Northumberland' Archaeologia Aeliana (ser2) Vol. 14 p. 16 online copy
Primary (Medieval documents or transcriptions of such documents - This section is far from complete and the secondary sources should be consulted for full references.)
- 1415, Nomina Castrorum et Fortaliciorum infra Comitatum Northumbrie online transcription

Most of the sites or buildings recorded in this web site are NOT open to the public and permission to visit a site must always be sought from the landowner or tenant.
It is an offence to disturb a Scheduled Monument without consent. It is a destruction of everyone's heritage to remove archaeological evidence from ANY site without proper recording and reporting.
Don't use metal detectors on historic sites without authorisation.

The information on this web page may be derived from information compiled by and/or copyright of Historic England, County Historic Environment Records and other individuals and organisations. It may also contain information licensed under the Open Government Licence. All the sources given should be consulted to identify the original copyright holder and permission obtained from them before use of the information on this site for commercial purposes.
The author and compiler of Gatehouse does not receive any income from the site and funds it himself. The information within this site is provided freely for educational purposes only.

The bibliography owes much to various bibliographies produced by John Kenyon for the Council for British Archaeology, the Castle Studies Group and others.

Suggestions for finding online and/or hard copies of bibliographical sources can be seen at this link.
Minor archaeological investigations, such as watching brief reports, and some other 'grey' literature is most likely to be held by H.E.R.s but is often poorly referenced and is unlikely to be recorded here, or elsewhere, but some suggestions can be found here.

The possible site or monument is represented on maps as a point location. This is a guide only. It should be noted that OS grid references defines an area, not a point location. In practice this means the actual center of the site or monument may often, but not always, be to the North East of the point shown. Locations derived from OS grid references and from latitude longitiude may differ by a small distance.
Further information on mapping and location can be seen at this link.

Please help to make this as useful a resource as possible by contacting Gatehouse if you see errors, can add information or have suggestions for improvements in functality and design.
Help is acknowledged.

*The listed building may not be the actual medieval building, but a building on the site of, or incorporating fragments of, the described site.

Data >	PastScape	County HER		Listing	I. O. E.
Maps >	Streetmap	NLS maps	Where's the path	Old-Maps
Data/Maps >	Magic	V. O. B.	Geology	LiDAR	Open Domesday
Air Photos >	Bing Maps	Google Maps	Getmapping	ZoomEarth
Photos >	CastleFacts	Geograph	Flickr	Panoramio