Low Old Shield Farmhouse, Greenhead

Description

Bastle house now a farmhouse. Late C16-early C17 with c.1700 openings on front; C19 outshut on rear. Coursed rubble; Welsh slate roof; stone and brick chimneys. Original entry in left gable end. 2 storeys, 2 bays. Huge boulder plinth on front and returns. Late C19 gabled stone porch with replaced door to left of centre. Moulded Tudor-arched doorway with run-out stops on front wall inside porch. 6-pane sash in C19 openings at ground-floor right. Replaced casements elsewhere in fragmentary double-chamfered surrounds. Window on first-floor right retains a chamfered stone mullion; possibly re-used Roman wall masonry to right of this window. Roof has coped right gable. Left end stone stack with top ledge; rebuilt brick right end stack. Blocked original doorway with alternating jambs on gabled left return. Single-storey added rear outshut with pent roof. Interior: 1.25-metre thick walls; both ground-floor rooms have adzed ceiling beams of heavy scantling; chimney flue inserted in front of original gable-end entry. Farmbuilding on right return is not of special interest. (Listed Building Report 1987)

Rectangular building, 6.7m x 10.3m, with walls 1.25m thick, of roughly coursed rubble including many reused Roman stones. 18th century out shut to rear (north). Boulder plinth. West end has central square-headed byre entrance door, now blocked, with roll-moulded surround and traces of blocked slit window above. South wall has later 17th century moulded Tudor arched doorway inside later porch; directly above porch is stone spout for slop stone. To west of porch former two-light mullioned window with sill lowered; similar window above, both having lost their mullions. East of porch is a 19th century window with three-light mullioned window above (one mullion removed). East end re-faced or rebuilt. Interior: ground floor rooms have heavy transverse beams (Ryder, P F 16-JUL-90 Field Investigation).
Bastle now converted into a farmhouse. Beside tributary of Tipalt Burn 1km north of Roman Wall. The blocked, square-headed byre entrance with a roll-moulded surround is a common form in north Tynedale but less so in the valleys of the South Tyne and its tributaries. Bastle was remodelled in late 17th century into a more conventional two-storey house - the south wall may have been refaced at this time. There are heavy closely-set transverse beams inside the house over both ground floor rooms, these may be original (Ryder 1990). (Northumberland HER)