NOTES ON NOVEMBER 2006 MEETING

Towers and Terraces of the North Pennines

The speaker at the November meeting of the Alston Moor Historical Society, Richard Young, spoke about ‘Towers and Terraces of the North Pennines’. The focus was upon traditional (vernacular) buildings in the form of houses, cottages, farms mills, chapels and schools. Specifically outside the definition of ‘vernacular’ are anything built after 1850, pattern book designs, Royal palaces, ‘polite’ stately homes, churches and cathedrals. Vernacular implies that the building materials and design is local to the area. The date of 1850 is used as a cut-off point as thereafter the advent of rail transport meant that materials could be brought in from outside the area and the true local origins may be lost.

In the North Pennines uplands sandstone and carboniferous limestone were both used in building either separately or in combination. Sandstone is easier to work but is more prone to erosion by weather, erosion and pollution. Of ten a finished wall would be covered with ‘harl’ – a mixture of small stones, gravel, sand, lime and cow dung. It was hurled against the wall and the name of this process became corrupted to ‘harl’. The modern day equivalent is pebble dash and contains cement which, unlike harl, does not allow the wall to breathe.

The commonly used roofing material was heather thatch laid on turf. Long straw thatch was also used but this died out when threshing by machine was introduced. Sandstone slabs made an excellent roof but required a strong structure to bear the weight and also needed a lower pitch than would otherwise have been needed. The flags were graduated in size with the heavier ones at the eaves and they were held in place with either wood pegs or sheep ribs.

There is a wide range of house types in our area and show the way in which social and political influences affected the design. The main types are:-

TOWER HOUSE OR PELE

These were built mainly in the 14th and 15 the century by the nobility and gentry for the purpose of defence during the Scots Wars when incursions into England were common place. There were few windows at the lower levels. These towers were usually surrounded by a stockade, or pele, which was another line of defence. Pele is a corruption of pale (i.e. fence), hence the expression ‘beyond the pale’.
Examples in our area are the Vicar’s Pele, Corbridge and Featherstone Castle. When the Scot’s raids ended the towers were often extended to provide more amenable living quarters.

BASTLES

Bastles are a smaller version of the towers and were built for the yeoman farmers with the livestock at ground level and the family with their valuables living upstairs, often accessed by climbing a ladder which was then drawn up to keep invaders at bay. A typical example can be found at Hopehead in the Swinhope Valley, near Sparty Lea, the restoration of which was featured in a recent TV programme.

Many of these buildings have shaped, rather than straight, lintels over doorways and these will be typically in the gable ends as opposed to the more usual centre of the front elevation. The lintels often carry dates or initials but these are not usually the date of building but more likely to be the date of a family wedding or the initials of the residents at some point in time. Bastles, like towers, have few, or no, windows on the ground floor. After the hostilities ended many properties were ‘improved’ in the romantic Victorian style and are still in use as comfortable family dwellings.

Other styles also developed from the 17 century onwards .The stair lobby house was a simple ‘two-up-two-down’ design with a centre door, one room deep, and from this evolved houses of similar style but larger, perhaps with 3 storeys or attics and dormer windows, used by merchants and aldermen. The double pile design was two rooms deep with an ‘M’ shaped roof and a gully connecting both parts. These gullies were to prove troublesome as they collected leaves and other material, causing potential damp and water ingress problems. In due course the design changed so that one roof would cover both parts of the building. This style developed in the 18th century and the demand for a larger number of rooms illustrated the desire for individual privacy as opposed to the communal living which had hitherto been the norm.

To cater for workers, single storey cottages were built by landowners although most of these have collapsed with a few survivors used for holiday accommodation. Similarly some employers in mining and agriculture built terraced cottages for workers, usually one-up one-down with an attached scullery and perhaps a small plot of land to grow crops to supplement their diet. Many of these still exist and, having been updated, are in good condition. There are many examples of combination houses to be seen i.e. half the house is a dwelling and the other a byre/hay loft. Evidence of previous usage is provided by bricked up doors and windows.

A shield was temporary place or building used for storage or shelter and the word in still in extensive use today, depicting the original purpose of the site. These are normally farming locations but not always the case e.g. North and South Shields were ‘shields’ for fishermen.

The presentation was fascinating in that Alston Moor abounds with examples of all these types of buildings which we tend to take for granted without a second glance. Having heard of their history and evolution, they will be regarded in a different light in the future, and all those present will be able to interpret and place the individual designs and types in their historical perspective!

The photograph illustrates a typical combination building, Hopehead in the Swinhope Valley, which encapsulates the history of the North Pennines over the past four centuries. To the right is the bastle, a fortified farmhouse built during the years of Border Reiving. This has later been extended by the addition of a lean-to or outshut, probably a dairy. To the left of the bastle there is a three storey dwelling house built to a symmetrical pattern in the late 18th or early 19th century. Attached to this house under the same roofline is a corresponding range of agricultural buildings featuring a stable with storage above.