Greenhaugh and Tarset

No remains of any bastles have been identified at Greenhaugh, although this may simply be an accident of survival. Nor is there any indication that Greenhaugh could yet be described as a village by this stage, but it is one of the more frequently mentioned of the settlements and would appear to have comprised more than a single farmstead (see Selected Sources and Surveys 4, for instance). A collection of farmsteads, deserving the title of a small hamlet at the most, should probably be envisaged.

The report on Border depopulation since the 27th year of Henry VIII’s reign (1535/6) made in 1584 suggests many of the settlements were depopulated or, to be more precise perhaps, lacked able-bodied men by the late 16th century (Harbottle & Newman 1973, 143-45 citing PRO SP 15/28). Nevertheless, as Harbottle and Newman point out (op. cit., 145), despite the unremitting gloom exhibited by the official records, no settlements mentioned in 1584 actually were abandoned at this time as far as can be judged, since all the placenames reappear in documents of the late 16th or 17th century.

Indeed, by the middle of the 17th century, the population level had apparently recovered, with the Hearth Tax of 1666 recording thirteen houses in Tarset (PRO E179/158/103). It is not clear what exactly ‘Tarset’ signifies in these context, i.e. were these houses clustered in a single nucleated settlement or alternatively do they represent a number of dispersed farmsteads scattered throughout the district surrounding Tarset Hall?

Given everything else that is known of the settlement pattern in Tarsetdale at this time, the latter is the more likely hypothesis, but the precise limits of the territory designated ‘Tarset’ cannot as yet be reconstructed. It is probably comparable with if not identical to the relatively small territorial township or administrative vill which is labelled Tarset during the medieval era. It certainly does not equate to any of the townships or’wards’ encountered in North Tynedale after the administrative reorganisation of 1729.