Slaley Church View

Description

Uncertain form bastle. Present state - house (Ryder 1990).
Church View is a former farmhouse. The house has a two storey three bay front in good quality squared stone with rusticated quoins and sill bands; the front doorway (now within a later porch) has a lintel inscription 'T TM 1769' (Thomas Teasdale who is recorded as having built the house for his grandfather) which goes with the frontage, but parts of the rear wall appear to survive from an earlier building. This wall is 0.85m thick, as opposed to the 0.65m of the front wall; an added outshut, with chamfered windows, appears to be part of the 1769 remodelling. The south east quoin of the older building (clearly heightened in the 18th century) is of long roughly shaped stones, and of typical bastle character. The ground floor fireplace at the east end of the house has a flat pointed head within a square frame and a wave moulded surround; it looks to be of later 17th century character.
The fragmentary remains of an earlier building incorporated in this house cannot be identified with any certainty as a bastle, although the quoining is arguably of bastle character and the wall thicknesses just about acceptable for a bastle in this area; the walling might, however, be coeval with the late 17th century fireplace, its position evidence of a conventional ground floor house (Ryder 1994-5). (Northumberland HER)

House, C17 remodelled 1769 by Thomas Teesdale (date and initials TTM on doorhead). Squared stone front, rubble rear; stone slate roof, stone and brick chimneys 2 storeys, 3 bays, slightly irregular. Rusticated quoins, sill bands. Right-of-centre 6-panel door in moulded surround with cornice,within later rendered porch; 4-pane sashes in raised stone surrounds. Coped gables with moulded kneelers; right endstack stepped and corniced with 2 conjoined shafts; left end stack rebuilt in brick (rendered) on old base.
Rear elevation: roughly-shaped quoins of C17 house to right, to left C18 outshut.
Interior: East room has large fireplace with flat-pointed head in square frame; wave-moulded surround.
Adjacent farmbuilding to east, with C20 metal roof, not of interest. (Listed Building Report)

Comments

Opposite the church, the site of which dates back at least to the C13, and was a farm but the actual evidence this was a bastle (a chamber above a brye) or a defended house is pretty slight.