Defensive Farmhouses within the Newcastle Boundary
As you wander through the leafy suburbs of present-day Newcastle, passing the tidy rows of semi-detached houses and the occasional Tesco Express, you might not expect to stumble upon the remnant of a medieval arms race. Yet, here in places like Throckley and Newburn, they still stand—curious stone fortresses looking rather like someone has dropped a chunk of Hadrian’s Wall into a housing estate and forgotten to collect it.
I have been studying and working on bastles for the better part of two decades, and I must confess, they never cease to fascinate me. These buildings, quite literally designed for war, nestled incongruously within the peaceful domesticity of suburban Newcastle, are rather like finding a tank parked in your grandmother’s garden—incongruous, certainly, but undeniably compelling.
So, what exactly is a bastle? Before we delve into Newcastle’s examples, let’s establish what we’re actually talking about. The term “bastle” comes from the French word “bastille” for fortress, though these Border examples are a bit more modest than their Parisian counterpart. Think of them as the medieval equivalent of a panic room, but one that had to accommodate both family and livestock.
They were not grand castles or manor houses, they were working farmsteads. Buildings constructed by people who had to get on with the job of agriculture, but also needed to be prepared for the very real possibility that their neighbours might want to murder them and steal their cattle. It’s a rather uniquely Border approach to architecture: practical, robust, and refreshingly honest about the realities of life in the medieval marches.
A bastle would typically follow a fairly standard template. The sort of layout that any heritage architect worth their salt should recognise immediately. Ground floor: a stone-vaulted byre for the livestock, accessed through a sturdy door that could be barricaded at a moment’s notice. First floor: living quarters for the family, reached by an external stone stair that could be demolished or blocked in times of trouble. Thick stone walls throughout, small windows, and a general air of “come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough”.
Before we get into Newcastle’s particular examples, we need to appreciate the rather extraordinary circumstances of life on the Anglo-Scottish border during the late medieval and early modern periods. This was not your typical English countryside, where the greatest threat might be a disagreement over parish boundaries or the occasional poacher. No, this was bandit country. This was cattle rustling so prevalent that it became a profession, and cross-border raids as regular as the seasons.
The Border Reivers
Those legendary families with names like Armstrong, Elliott and Kerr turned livestock theft into something approaching an art form. Operating under their own peculiar code of honour, where stealing your neighbour’s cattle was perfectly acceptable behaviour, provided you did it with sufficient style and daring. It was, frankly, a society that would have made Robin Hood blush.
For the ordinary farming families of the border, caught in the middle of this chaos, the solution was architectural. If you couldn’t rely on the law to protect your property (and you certainly couldn’t—the Wardens of the Marches were often in cahoots with the very reivers they were supposed to suppress), then you built your protection into the very fabric of your home.
Now, here’s where things get particularly interesting from the perspective of a conservation architect. Newcastle’s expansion over the centuries has gradually swallowed up what were, at the time, isolated farmsteads in the surrounding countryside. The result is that we now find these extraordinary defensive structures sitting cheek by jowl with 1930s housing estates and modern retail parks.
The Throckley bastles
Take Throckley, for example. Today, it’s a pleasant enough suburb, the sort of place where the most exciting event might be a particularly contentious parish council meeting. Yet scattered throughout the area are the remains of bastles that once stood guard over a landscape where armed raids were a monthly occurrence. The juxtaposition is almost surreal, medieval fortress architecture surrounded by the gentle domesticity of suburban life.
The Throckley bastles, like their counterparts elsewhere within what’s now Newcastle’s boundary, display all the classic features that any listed building architect should be familiar with. The ground-floor byres invariably stone-vaulted—a crucial defensive feature that prevented attackers from simply setting fire to the building from below. These vaults are masterpieces of medieval engineering, built without mortar in many cases, relying purely on the skill of the mason and the physics of compression.
The byre doors themselves tell their own story. Massive oak affairs, often reinforced with iron, designed to keep out both two-legged and four-legged intruders. Many bear the scars of their violent past, axe marks, bullet holes, and the iron fittings that once secured heavy wooden bars across the inside of the door. It’s rather sobering to run your fingers over these marks and realise you’re touching the physical evidence of someone’s desperate fight for survival.
What’s particularly fascinating about Newcastle’s bastles is how they’ve adapted over the centuries. Many have been extensively modified, with later owners adding Georgian sash windows, Victorian bay windows or modern extensions. It’s a palimpsest of architectural history, each generation leaving its mark whilst the medieval core endures.
From a conservation perspective, this presents both challenges and opportunities. The purist in me occasionally winces at some of the later additions—there’s one bastle in Newburn where someone in the 1960s thought it would be a good idea to add a picture window that wouldn’t look out of place in a modernist bungalow. But these modifications are themselves part of the building’s history, evidence of how each generation has sought to make these ancient structures work for contemporary life.
The stone vaulting, thankfully, has generally survived intact. It’s simply too robust to remove easily and too useful as storage space to abandon entirely. I’ve crawled through dozens of these vaults over the years, torch in hand, marvelling at the skill of medieval masons who could create such perfectly engineered spaces using nothing but local stone and centuries of accumulated knowledge.
The external stairs present their own conservation challenges. Many have been rebuilt multiple times and it’s often difficult to determine how much of what we see today is original medieval work and how much is later reconstruction. The principle remains the same though, these stairs were designed to be defensible, often with a right-angled turn that would force attackers to expose their sword arm as they climbed.
Bastles in Newburn
Newburn, now firmly within Newcastle’s suburban embrace, contains some of the finest bastle remains in the region. The village sits on the north bank of the Tyne and its strategic position made it particularly vulnerable to cross-border raids. The bastles here show clear evidence of having been built with defence as the primary consideration, comfort very much secondary.
One particular example that never fails to impress visiting heritage architects is the bastle that now forms part of a modern farmhouse complex. The medieval core is still clearly visible, with its characteristic thick walls and small, deeply recessed windows. But it has been sensitively extended over the centuries, creating a building that manages to be both historically significant and practically useful.
The byre door here is particularly fine, a massive affair that still swings on its original iron hinges. The threshold is worn smooth by centuries of cattle hooves and you can still see the slots where the wooden bars would have been dropped into place. It’s the sort of detail that brings the past vividly to life, reminding you that this wasn’t just architecture, it was survival.
Living with History
I know of a few bastles in Newcastle that are still lived in. I’ve visited several and it is always fascinating to see how families have adapted these ancient buildings to modern living. The massive stone walls which would have been needed to keep out the Border Reivers make for fantastic insulation. The tiny slit windows that were designed to keep enemy arrows out now make for charmingly cosy rooms.
Owners of inhabited bastles are, in my experience, always fantastically knowledgeable about their properties’ histories and have typically gone to great lengths to preserve them. They’ll point out the priest hole behind the false wall or show you the floorboards that can be lifted to reveal the medieval stonework below. They are, in a very real sense, the custodians of these buildings and without their care and attention many more of them would not have survived.
From the point of view of a conservation architect, working on occupied historic buildings is always particularly challenging. Modern building regulations have, quite rightly, a whole host of requirements when it comes to things like fire exits and disabled access. Ensuring compliance with these whilst retaining the defensive medieval character of these buildings is a tricky balancing act.
The Urban Context Challenge
Perhaps the most striking thing about Newcastle’s bastles, though, is their urban context. These are buildings which were designed for a time and a place where your nearest neighbour might have been miles away and if help came at all, it would be too late to be of much use. Yet now they are built into the heart of the city, surrounded by street lighting, tarmac roads and neighbours more likely to complain about your hedge height than attempt to steal your sheep or cattle.
The question of how we contextualise these buildings is a fascinating one. Do we try to recreate something of their original rural setting through careful landscaping to keep open spaces around them? Or do we embrace their new urban context as simply the latest stage of their evolution?
My own feeling is the latter. These buildings are all about adaptation and about survival and their current suburban setting is just the latest manifestation of that. The challenge for the conservation architect is to ensure that that adaptation does not come at the expense of the historic features and character which make these buildings so significant.
Conservation Challenges and Opportunities
Working with bastles always throws up a particular set of challenges which I feel every conservation architect should be aware of. The stone vaulting, although extremely robust, is very susceptible to water ingress and needs careful management. The massive stone walls, whilst great for defence, can also cause problems with damp if modern heating systems are not well designed. And the small windows, although great for character, make for rather dark properties by modern standards.
But these challenges can also be opportunities. The thermal mass of those thick stone walls, for example, make these properties remarkably energy efficient if they are well insulated. The stone vaulting creates interior spaces of real drama and grandeur that are impossible to replicate in a modern build. And the small windows, whilst restrictive in terms of natural light, do create wonderful cosy, intimate spaces with a very particular character.
The key, in my experience, is to work with the building’s medieval logic rather than trying to retrofit modern sensibilities. The people who built these structures knew their materials intimately and built for longevity. Modern interventions are most successful when they complement and enhance that original logic rather than attempting to subvert it.
The Future of Newcastle’s Bastles
I’m actually quite optimistic about the future of Newcastle’s bastles. The growth of heritage architecture and increasingly sophisticated conservation techniques means that we are better equipped to understand and protect these buildings than ever before. The biggest challenge will be in ensuring that they remain economically viable. Empty historic buildings fall into disrepair very quickly whereas those that are occupied and adapted to modern use tend to flourish.
The key to this will be architects and conservation architects in newcastle upon tyne working together to ensure that these buildings can function for modern families without losing the features which make them special. It’s a fine line to walk, but one that is essential if we want future generations to be able to experience these wonderful survivors from our turbulent past.
Conclusion
Newcastle’s bastles are, I think, one of the things that makes the city special. They are extraordinary survivals from a bloody and tumultuous age and their continued presence within the modern urban landscape creates a dialogue between past and present that is both humbling and inspiring.
Inhabited historic buildings present us with dual aspects as conservation architects because they serve as sources of both inspiration and challenge. They are a reminder that architecture is always about more than just aesthetics—it’s about how people respond to the challenges of their time through the built environment. The families who built these bastles were responding to the challenges of cattle raids and cross-border violence. We respond to the challenges of climate change, accessibility and sustainability.
The methods are different, but the principles remain the same. Good architecture is architecture that works, that serves the needs of the people who live in it within the constraints and opportunities of its context. Newcastle’s bastles have been doing that for over five hundred years and with careful stewardship can continue to do so for centuries to come.
In our hurry to rush into the future, it is so easy to forget that the past still has lessons to teach us. These wonderful buildings, with their robust practicality and their clear-eyed assessment of life’s dangers and their unapologetically robust response to those dangers are a masterclass in architecture which really serves its purpose. We owe it to them, and to future generations, to care about them and to do our very best to protect them. After all, they’ve been keeping watch over the Tyne valley for half a millennium. The least we can do is ensure they’re still there for the next five hundred years.
