Haggburn Gate Bastle, Allendale

Description

The bastle at Haggburn Gate is now an outbuilding, it is attached to the east end of a small 19th century farmhouse.
The bastle measures 9m by 6.5m externally, with walls of rubble c.1m thick; there are long roughly shaped angle quoins of the usual Allendale bastle type, and a boulder plinth. There seems to have been considerable refacing or rebuilding of the external wall faces; the upper part of the east end is in recent brick, and the byre doorway (in the centre of the east end) and upper doorway (east of centre in the south wall) both appear, in their present form, of plain 18th or early 19th century character; the other openings are also of late type, except for a first floor window at the east end of the north wall, which has a rebated and chamfered surround, and retains its central iron bar.
Internally, much more of interest survives. The basement retains its original transverse beams, c.0.25m thick, and a pair of heavy hearth corbels at the west end. The upper floor has remains of a firehood at the west end; the front of the stone flue seems to have been carried on a transverse beam resting (at its north end) on a large stone corbel, which remains; at the rear of the hearth is a rebated doorway of what appears to be a bread oven, set into the wall. The roof has been of three bays; the eastern truss remains, of principal rafter form, with a collar; the timbers are of heavy scantling and well finished with pegged joints (Ryder 1994-5). (Northumberland HER)