A thick-walled bastle from the Border raiding years in the Tarset valley, with a second ruined bastle and an 18th-century farmhouse beside it
Open accessfree to visit at any reasonable time
Substantial ruinsruined, but plenty survives above ground
Families farming the Tarset valley in the 16th century lived with the threat of reivers, the armed raiders who stole cattle back and forth across the Anglo-Scottish border. Their answer was the bastle, a fortified farmhouse that kept the animals shut in downstairs and the family living above them. At Black Middens (the register spells it Black Middings) the bastle has two storeys of big, roughly squared stones with its original livestock doorway, now blocked, and narrow slits instead of windows at ground level. A flight of stone steps outside leads up to the upstairs door, and the holes for the wooden bar that secured it are there in the stonework. Only one written record of the place is known, from 1583, when the Armstrong family seem to have raided it. The bastle is unstaffed and free to look round in daylight, on the remote northern side of the valley, and more bastles, still roofed and privately owned, stand at Gatehouse, about two kilometres south-east.
Full name: Two bastles, an 18th century farmhouse and associated enclosures at Black Middings
More at the National Heritage List entry
