Castlefacts

England - Northern England - Northumberland - Monk Bastle, Allendale

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Range of four bastle type buildings stands at Monk Farm. It is difficult to work out the sequence in which they were built because of later alterations but the earliest building seems to be at the southern end and the latest at the north. The earliest building looks like a tower rather than a typical bastle and may be earlier than any of the other bastles in the area. The farm was known as 'le Menke' as early as 1547 and is said to have been a cell once attached to Hexham Priory. (Keys to the Past)

Range of buildings at Monk Farmhouse, allegedly an Augustinian cell of Hexham Priory, incorporating remains of a bastle, or possibly earlier pele or tower house. The buildings are mainly 16th and 17th century in date, though incorporating some earlier fabric, and are built of stone rubble with stone and slate roofs. The north eastern gable is capped by a dovecote supported on corbels; an adaptation of a large stack. (PastScape)

The farm at Monk (known as 'le Menke' as early as 1547 (N.C.H. 3,71); there is a tradition of a 'house of correction' belonging to Hexham Priory) stands on a shelf on the east side of the valley of the West Allen, at the head of a steep slope (NY 783565).

Four bastle-period buildings now form a range c. 30.5 by c. 6.2m externally. Later alterations obscure the relative chronology of the buildings in part, but the building sequence seems to have been from south to north. Phase I is an almost square building (of 6.6 m side) with the usual massive quoins; surviving original openings are a blocked doorway in the north wall (now internal) with an unusual two-centred arch, and a series of splayed slits at both basement and first-floor levels; the levels of these openings do not relate well to the present floor levels and could point to either a vault having been cut away (the north wall has been thinned internally) or an intermediate floor being removed

Phase II, 7.5 m long, has a round-arched doorway on the west and a basement slit, with remains of slightly-larger windows above, on the east; the round-arched doorway, both in form and in position, is very reminiscent of the basement cross-passage doorways at Sinderhope Shield; there is now a recent doorway, possibly a replacement necessitated by a change in ground level, in the opposite (east) wall. Phase III, 10.5 m long, has remains of a triangular-headed doorway at first-floor level in the west wall, with more basement slits and larger chamfered first-floor windows on the east, whilst phase IV is a square building with various blocked openings; in the north end wall are a triangular-headed basement door and a large fireplace, the corbelled-out stack of which has been converted into a dovecote.

Unfortunately no original roofs survive, and the wall tops have been altered throughout the range. However, there are a number of intriguing features. Phase I looks almost as if it could have been a tower rather than a conventional bastle; as the two-centred doorway is of convincingly 'medieval' appearance, we may well be dealing with a structure pre-dating the majority of bastles in the area. Phase IV also might be interpreted as a tower-like building, especially as it seems to have been built with its own south wall (rather than utilizing the already-existing north end wall of phase III), although the evidence for this is somewhat obscured by both walls having now been removed. One might tentatively reconstruct the range as having a series of living rooms at first floor level (in the phase II and III sections), flanked by a pair of 'towers' — a degree of elaboration one would not expect from a farmstead of this period in this area. (Ryder 1992)