Boghead, also known variously as Bog Head, Corby Castle, Corbie Castle, Corbie's Castle, Barty's Pele, or Borbie Castle, is a 16th-century bastle house in Tarset, Northumberland. Bastles are fortified farm houses built in the early modern period in the Anglo-Scottish marches. They were designed to provide shelter to farmers and their livestock, who faced the threat of raids from border reivers. The Boghead site consists of remains of the bastle itself as well as the remains of two farmhouses and a sheepfold. Boghead is one of several bastles on the banks of Tarset Burn, a small river, and one of many in the wider North Tynedale area.
Local folklore associates Boghead with the story of Barty Milburn and Corbit Jack, who undertook a retaliatory raid against Scots who had stolen sheep. According to the story, Barty killed two Scots, one of whom killed Corbit Jack, before returning with sheep. Barty Milburn may be the Bartrame Mylburne who reported an attack led by Kinmont Willie Armstrong on the people of Tynedale, including the people of Boghead, in 1583, which was the year Boghead entered the historical record. The site remained in use in the more peaceful following decades, but had seemingly fallen out of use by 1770.
The site is a scheduled monument and the main bastle building is a Grade II listed building. It has national significance as a rare example of a relatively unmodified bastle building; as one of several surviving bastles in the local area; and because it features a "quenching hole", an unusual defensive feature to put out fires lit against the ground-floor doorway. The site is publicly accessible as part of the Tarset Bastle Trail. Writing in 2020, the journalist Katie Gatens described it as "a bastle slumped in the long grass, finally conquered by thick moss".
Historical context
In early modern Britain, the marches around the Anglo-Scottish border were culturally and legally distinct from both Scotland to the north and England to the south. Reiving, a term which captures a range of banditry practices including livestock theft and blackmail, was a feature of life in the region, as were loyalties to (and rivalries between) clans or "surnames". The particular surnames of the remote North Tyne valley, where Boghead is located, were Charlton, Milburn, Dodd, and Robson. The threat of raids influenced the buildings of the border region, including pele towers and bastle houses. Although these names are somewhat interchangeable (and several other names are used) pele towers are tall, typically with battlements. Bastles include both large fortified farmhouses and smaller, rougher, thick-walled barns.
These simpler bastles, of which many are known from North Tynedale, were two-storey, with thick walls, combining the function of a barmkin (a fortified enclosure) and a pele into a single building. Typically, there would be thick wooden external doors on both the ground floor and the first floor, with no internal stairway. The ground floor served to protect valuable livestock in the event of a raid, while the first floor comprised the living quarters. Access to the first floor was via a retractable external ladder or, later, when raids presented less of a threat, by external stone stairs. The bastles might feature small windows or ventilation slits on either floor, but they would have provided little light. Amenities were basic: The first floor would include a fireplace, and perhaps wattle and daub or curtain partitions and basic cupboard space. Water would be stored in a barrel, with a bucket for toileting. More defensively practical roofs would have featured stone slabs secured to beams; heather thatching would present a fire risk, but was also in use in some cases.
According to the archaeologist John Dodds, between 400 and 500 bastles were built in Northumbria; in 2011, the archaeologist Rolin Christopherson found that the existence of some 210 could be verified. Bastles often appear in loose collections, a few hundred metres apart, though there are also examples of solitary bastles or with two or three in very close proximity. Boghead is part of a cluster along Tarset Burn, a river that originates on Emblehope Moor, then travels south-east, to where it joins the North Tyne approximately below the reservoir of Kielder Water. In 1999, the archaeologist Amy Lax classified Boghead as the most northerly of ten bastles along the Tarset Burn. The others are Highfield, the Comb, Shilla Hill, Waterhead, Hill House, two at Black Middens, and two at Gatehouse. She added that there was historical evidence, but not archaeological evidence, of bastles at the nearby settlements of Redheugh and Sidwood. A 2008 survey listed Boghead as one of three bastles along the Tarset Burn, the others being Shilla Hill and Black Middens. Christopherson identified the remains of 15 bastles in Tarset: two at Black Middens, Boghead, Boughthill, Camp Cottage, Donkleywood, Gatehouse Farm South, Gatehouse North, the south Bastle at Gatehouse, Hill House, Shilla Hill, and Waterhead are ruins, while Gatehouse Farmhouse, Highfield, and Redheugh remain in use as houses. The Tarset Archive Group identifies 33 bastles in the area, though some are reported sites with no visible remains, and others survive only in the most minimal form.
Location
The site is located at OSGB NY 76124 91005, north west of Comb, in Tarset, Northumberland, in the foothills of the Cheviots. It is around from the current Anglo-Scottish border.
Boghead sits at the confluence of Tarset Burn to the east and the smaller Highfield Burn to the north, squarely in a floodplain. To the north west, there is another river; though now dry, it drained into Highfield Burn into the 20th century. This suggests that the courses of the surrounding rivers have changed repeatedly over the centuries that Boghead has stood. The ground around the buildings is marshy, with standing water and water channels. It sits at the base of a steep slope facing north east.
Boghead, along with several other bastles in the area, lies within the 20th century Kielder Forest. Although the site now sits in a clearing, there is evidence that it has previously had trees planted within it. From the late 13th century until the planting of the woodland, the area would have been moorland punctuated by occasional agricultural sites.
Name The bastle is known by a range of different names; "such confusion in naming is not unique". These include Boghead, Bog Head, Corby Castle, Corbie Castle, Corbie's Castle, Barty's Pele, and Borbie Castle. It is also sometimes called the Comb, although that name more typically refers to a separate nearby site. Lax argues that, of the various names used to refer to the site, Boghead is the "more correct"; this appears on an 1866 Ordnance Survey map and an 1841 tithe map.
Site
The site consists of four distinct structures: a bastle, two farmhouses (one in ruins, one identifiable from earthworks), and earthworks indicating a sheepfold with a possible shepherd's hut. Though the structures may have been built at different times, the buildings all represent part of the same bastle complex; at one time, they would have been a small hamlet.
Bastle The bastle is rectangular; it measures on the outside. It is oriented from the south east to the north west. The walls are thick, built using big, unhewn stones. Rough boulders feature as quoins. At its taller points, on the south west and north west, the remaining wall stands at . On the south east and north east walls, it stands at .
The west wall features an entranceway to the ground floor. The head is square, and features round door jambs. There is evidence of two doors featuring drawbars. A distinctive and unusual feature of this bastle is a tunnel cut through the wall above the doorway. Although this has been described as a murder hole, it is much more likely that it is a "quenching hole"; if someone attacking the bastle were to light a fire in the doorway, those defending the structure could douse it by pouring water through the tunnel. The ground floor once featured a vaulted roof, which has now mostly collapsed. The eastern wall features a slit window.
The external means of accessing the upper floor, which would have been the living area, are unclear; it may have been a wooden ladder or a staircase.
Other structures To the immediate north west of the bastle, oriented from the south east to the north west, is a farmstead. Though very close to the bastle, Lax reports that it does not seem to be attached, though at the time she was writing, tumbled stone prevented a full exploration. Only the foundations remain today, and they are covered in plant life. It measures externally, and internally. The end walls are thick, and up to high. The building has two rooms, but these are not conjoined internally. There is a single entrance into the larger (and more substantially built) room in the north-eastern end. The smaller room is at the north western end, and may have been a byre or outbuilding.
beyond the first farmhouse is a second. This measures externally, and internally. Though ruined, more of it is visible than the first farmhouse; the surviving walls are up to . It has three rooms.
Beyond the second farmhouse are earthworks indicating a sheepfold. It measures up to . Its banks are tall with a width of . Earthworks immediately to the east of the sheepfold indicate a possible site of a shepherd's hut; a platform measures .
History
Origins Bastles are understood to have been built in the late 16th to 17th centuries. Few bastles have been excavated or dated. However, documentary evidence suggests that Boghill, and neighbouring bastles, were in existence by the middle to second half of the 16th century. However, this is comparatively early for bastles; those reliably dated typically originated towards the end of the period. It is therefore possible either that Boghead and its neighbours were early bastles, or else that the documentary evidence dating these settlements to the 16th century refer to pre-bastle dwellings. However, Lax reports that there is limited archaeological evidence of pre-bastle buildings at the sites in the Tarset valley, and none at Boghead.
The people of Boghead were freehold farmers, though not necessarily wealthy. They were pastoralists. Aerial photography and comparisons with evidence from the nearby bastles suggest that the people at Boghead would also have grown their own cereals, as well as fodder crops. Like all bastles, Boghead was built as a defensive structure; however, the fact that it was overlooked by a slope would have put it at a defensive disadvantage. On the other hand, the surrounding rivers would have made approach difficult on three sides, and the slope, on the fourth side, would have offered a degree of concealment.
Raids and feuds According to North Tynedale folklore, Boghead was the home of Barty Milburn, Corbitt Jack (also called Corbit Jack), or both. The 19th century historian Edward Charlton recorded the story as told to him by Muckle Jock Milburn (died 1837), who claimed to be descended from Barty. Charlton identifies Barty's home as the Combe, though Jack's home is not identified by name. Charlton's telling for the story is as follows: