Akeld Bastle : Description
(P.F. Ryder account after a visit 19 7 90)
The building long known as 'Akeld Bastle' stands on the west side of a lane running southwards up the fellside from the hamlet of Akeld, and to the east of a small stream flowing down from the Cheviots; the site is of no particular strength. It is a rectangular structure 19 by 7.3 m externally, with walls 1.2 m thick of heavy rubble. The stone is a local reddish conglomerate.
The quoins and dressings are of sandstone; the dressings of the first-floor openings, and the greater part of each angle quoin (laid in side-alternate manner) are roughly-tooled blocks of a blush-grey stone. These look to be of 18th-century date, although an account of the building by the Rev. M.Culley in Archaeologia Aeliana 3rd series IX (1915), states that the upper floor 'would appear to be an addition of 70 or 80 years ago'.
The ground floor of the building is a single undivided chamber with a semicircular barrel vault; it is entered by a square-headed doorway towards the south end of the long west wall, with a chamfered surround and a rough relieving arch above; the rather tall proportions of the doorway hint that it might have been heightened, but there is no clear proof of this. There are two checks for doors, and a single drawbar tunnel in he south jamb; further north in the same wall a modern doorway has been cut through the wall.
The basement is lit by an assortment of narrow splayed loops, some cut rather obliquely through the walls. There are three loops in the south end, with above them a fourth which, unlike the others, has roughly-cut sandstone dressings. There is also a higher-level loop in the centre of the south end, now blocked by the external staircase. These upper loops seem to have lit some sort of lofts (or lofts) beneath the vault; there are various sockets for timbers c 1.5 m above the present floor, mostly in the end walls. There is a remarkably small ladder hole (according to RCHM 0.36 by 0.28 m) in the crown of the vault a short distance north of the entrance.
The upper part of the building has been completely rebuilt, and has much thinner walls. A double stair at the south end rises to a central square-headed doorway giving access to a granary, lit by three small windows on the west. The north end of the floor is partitioned off and forms a dovecote, access to which is by a more recent door in the east wall. The north gable has an impressive array of round-arched pigeon holes, arranged in groups of two or three, with alighting shelves beneath.
Akeld Bastle does not seem to have been a bastle house in the same sense as the many small defensible farmhouses found further south in the county; its parallels are more with larger buildings such as that at Pressen (NT 836358) and the surviving range at Castle Heaton (NT 901419) which are perhaps better regarded in a separate class as 'stronghouses'. The 1541 Border Survey mentions a 'lytle fortelett or bastle house without a barmkin' at Akeld. It is not clear whether this reference is to the surviving building, or a predecessor.
