Doddington Bastle. Photo by Peter Ryder.

(NT 99813250) Bastle (Remains of). (1)

A ruined L-shaped bastle-house of 1584. (2)

Scheduled. (3)

Remains consist of the north and west walls, and a stair-turret. (4)

Condition unchanged. (5)

McDowall and Mercer refer to the structure at Doddington as a large fortified building, not a bastle, although of the same rectangular form as bastles. This type of building probably represents the homes of men of higher social standing than the ordinary bastle-builder. (6)

Doddington Bastle, Grade II*. Ruined strong house. 1584 for Lord Grey. Large roughly dressed stone with dressed quoins and window surrounds. T-shaped. Main block three storey, with projecting three-storey stair tower. Main block measures c.60ft x 25ft. West wall to full height, north wall to c.20ft. Tower stands to full height. Remains of parapet in south-west corner. Three buttresses to rear and blocked door. Interior: remains of stone mural stair. (7)

Doddington Bastle is a ruined strong house, 17.4m by 7.6m externally, of three storeys with a projecting turret containing the entrance and stair in the centre of the south front. It was built by Sir Thomas Grey of Chillingham. There was formerly a datestone, removed to Ewart Park. The building stood complete until 1896, when the eastern part collapsed in a gale.
The fabric is of massive coursed blocks of roughly squared sandstone with galletting, with better cut angle quoins.
What survives today are the west end, perilously rent and close to collapse, the south and west walls of the stair turret and the lower part of the north wall.
The west end has a large segmental arched fireplace at basement level and a square headed fireplace (its lintel broken and about to fall) to the first floor. At the head of the gable are fragments of two small windows lighting the attic and at the south west corner a short length of parapet, set slightly forward of the wall face below.
The turret has one jamb of the entrance doorway in its east wall, three chamfered loops on the south and hanging remains of a stone newel stair, the undersides of the treads being carefully shaped. The gable has a raised coping.
The north wall has obviously had a long history of structural problems and has been both thickened internally and strengthened externally by three big raking buttresses. It now stands to around first floor level. There is a blocked chamfered loop near its west end, only visible externally. The east end of the building has been completely removed, probably when adjacent farmbuildings were built. (8)

Some repair and conservation work was carried out of the ruined remains during 2005 and 2006. This involved some recording work carried out by PF Ryder and the Architectural Survey team of English Heritage. A series of eight worked stones were retrieved from the rubble partly cleared from the interior of the building, including a series of chamfered window jambs. The bastle has undergone a number of changes since when recorded by Knowles in the later 19th century, as well as Ryder in the earlier 1990s. (9)(10)

Scheduled. (11)

A ruined L-shaped bastle-house of 1584. Scheduled. (12a)

NT 998 325. Bastle House. Scheduled No ND/68. (12b)

Dodds notes that the building is frequently referred to as a bastle, but that it was clearly superior to bastles. Of three storeys measuring 57 feet by 25 feet with a projection on one side housing stairs, and a parapet around the ridged roof. (12c)

Cathcart King lists this as a bastle, but notes it as being a powerful specimen of its class. (12d)