Whitshields Bastle

Description

Bastle, side walls 1.1m thick. Byre entrance in long wall; first floor beamed ceiling. Present state - house (Ryder 1990).
Whitshields is a T-plan house with metre thick walls (Ryder 1991).
Whitshields stands on the north side of the South Tyne Valley on the east side of a small tributary burn. The house consists of a north-south block 10.5m by 6.44m, and a rear block 8.05m by 6.9m extended from its north end to form an overall L-plan (there are later pent roofed additions on the north). A range of farm buildings 15m long continues the line of the rear block eastward. The house is rendered and pebble dashed, and all its external features are of 19th or 20th century date, however its walls are of considerable thickness (c.1.05m). The ground floor room in the rear block has heavy and irregular transverse beams of bastle character. The fabric of the range of farm buildings is not particularly distinctive, being roughly coursed rubble of no great size, but its side walls are c.1m thick; the east end wall, c.0.6m thick, has clearly been rebuilt. At the west end of the range, against the end wall of the house, is a through passage, but both its doorways are of 19th century character, as are all the other openings, except for a doorway (now a window) midway along the south wall, which has a flat pointed head and a chamfered surround, along with a drawbar tunnel in its internal jamb. A thinner cross wall now divides the range and obstructs this former doorway. The western section of the range has irregular old beams like those in the house, whilst the eastern section has later timbers. The roof has old principal rafter trusses with collars.
This group of house and farmbuilding range is clearly, from its wall thicknesses, a defensible building, presumably of early 17th century date; it is also one considerably larger than the usual bastles of the area. The character of its fabric (at least in the farm building range, as the house is all rendered) is not typical of the period, but is seen again in a thick walled building at West End Town (NY 76 NE 53) (Ryder 1994-5). (Northumberland HER)