Humshaugh House, Humshaugh (The Gatehouse Record)

Also known as, or recorded in historical documents as;
Manor House

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

OS Map Grid Reference: NY92077154
Latitude 55.03827° Longitude -2.12556°

Humshaugh House, Humshaugh has been described as a probable Pele Tower, and also as a probable Bastle.

There are masonry ruins/remnants remains.

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

Description

House. Early C18 incorporating medieval or C16 fabric, enlarged to rear in later C18. Brick front and rear, west end rubble, east end rendered; ashlar rusticated quoins, dressings and cornice. Graduated Lakeland slate roof, stone stacks. South elevation 2 storeys, 5 bays, symmetrical. Brick in irregular, largely stretcher, bond. Plinth, sill bands, 1st floor band, modillion eaves cornice. Central renewed glazed door with patterned fanlight, in eared architrave with pulvinated frieze,cornice and pediment. Plate-glass sash windows with wedge lintels cut to represent alternately-raised voussoirs; ground floor sill band steped down beneath sills. Overlapped-slab coping to gables, with rebuilt end stacks. Left return shows rear quoins of early C18 house with blocked stone-surround doorway above, beneath roof weathering of removed structure.
Rear elevation similar to front, brick in English garden wall bond 1 and 3. Doorway in eared architrave in porch which has renewed door flanked by rusticated pilasters with moulded bases; moulded cornice with pediment, later infill, rendered, to sides.
Interior renewed after serious fire in 1969. Central spine wall, rear wall of early C18 house, 1.2 metre thick; probably remnant of an earlier defensible structure. At one time known as the Manor House (Listed Building Report).

A substantial five bay, two storey, house at the east end of Humshaugh village. The front elevation is of brick (early 18th century), but a central east-west spine wall is of rubble and is 1.2m thick. Quoining visible in the west wall shows that the early 18th century house was doubled in width in the later 18th century. The thickness of the spine wall suggests that it predates this phase, and it would seem likely to be a survival from a defensible structure of some sort, probably pre-dating the 17th century.
The garden wall adjoining the east(?) end of the house incorporates part of an older building, with rubble masonry and roughly shaped quoins (Ryder 1994-5). (Northumberland HER)

Sources of information, references and further reading

National Heritage List for England Listed Building number(s) 1156020
Historic England (PastScape) Defra or Monument number(s) 1162110.
County Historic Environment Record (or Sites and Monuments Record) number(s) N9335.

Books
- Dodds, John F., 1999, Bastions and Belligerents (Newcastle upon Tyne: Keepdate Publishing) p. 362
Other sources: Theses; 'grey' literature; in-house reports; unpublished works; etc.
- Ryder, P.F., 1994-5, Towers and Bastles in Northumberland Part 4 Tynedale District Vol. 2 p. 112

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