Tarset The Settlement : Village Or Hamlet?

Harbottle and Newman suggest there was a village at Tarset (1973, 138-9), however Wrathmell is more circumspect (1975 II, 506) noting that ‘no indication has been found of the size or composition of the medieval settlement there’. No bondage tenants are recorded there in any of the early 14th century inquisitions (see inset box below for the importance of bondages in a conventional lowland township and manor). Instead fourteen bondage holdings at neighbouring Charlton are listed. 16th -17th century documents indicate there had been 19 tenants of Tarset at some stage before 1584 and there were 13 houses registered for the Hearth Tax there in 1666, but it is not clear whether these records refer to the population of a nucleated village site or settlement dispersed throughout the township in scattered farmsteads.

All this does not mean there was no settlement at Tarset alongside the castle and the other adjuncts of manorial lordship and economy. The occurrence of the surname de Tyrset would imply there was at least a hamlet there (although it could perhaps also denote origin from an area or township territory rather than a specific settlement). However the evidence, in particular the absence of bondage holdings, does suggest that Tarset was not a regular nucleated village with rows of peasant farmers’ houses and attached toft enclosures plus open fields of arable riggs and meadow beyond, such as one would expect to find in the coastal plain of Northumberland.

Neither the aerial photographs nor surface examination have revealed any earthworks other than those of the castle itself and some ridge and furrow in the adjacent field to the east. At present Tarset comprises a single farmstead, Tarset Hall, with a small hamlet nearby, at Laneheads.

Picture : Hamlet of Lanehead

Picture : Lanehead Village Hall

Picture : Lanehead Chapel