Pele Tower On East Return Of Pockerley Farmhouse

The pele tower, located on the east side of Pockerley Farmhouse, is likely from the 15th century and has undergone later alterations and additions. It is constructed from coursed rubble with larger stones in the lower courses and features a Welsh slate roof. The building has a rectangular plan measuring 10.3 metres long and 7.3 metres wide, and it stands two storeys high.

The east gable end is raised and has large, roughly-squared quoins, a wide segmental relieving arch beneath the gable, and two later battered buttresses with a 20th-century casement window in between. The south wall includes a fragment of a plinth, similar masonry, and a late 19th-century first-floor sash window. The north wall, which is obscured by a narrow outshut added later, originally had a blocked two-light window with arched heads and a hoodmould on the first floor, which may still be concealed behind the outshut. The west gable end is hidden by the adjoining farmhouse. The roof is steeply pitched with a coped east gable.

Access to the interior is through a doorway in the barn on the south side. The walls are 1.6 metres thick on the ground floor and 1.2 metres thick above. Inside, there is a passage with two openings on the north side: a roughly-arched opening leading to a mural stairway inside the east gable and a chamfered round-arched doorway that opens into a stone barrel-vaulted chamber, which has a blocked splayed loop on the west side. The mural stairway leads to a first-floor square-headed doorway. The subdivided upper chamber features three cambered ceiling beams of heavy scantling. The main room contains a wide chamfered fireplace and two blocked windows behind cupboards on the north wall. A small chamber beyond a lath and plaster partition has a blocked window with a rough shouldered rear arch.

The partly reconstructed roof retains many original timbers of heavy scantling with wood pegged joints. It consists of three similar principal trusses, with jowled king posts on tie beams that have arched braces to the ridge piece. The principal rafters are halved into reused cambered collars, which are halved into the king posts. There are also two intermediate trusses with principals bedded into the wall.

This pele tower is a rare, albeit altered, example in County Durham and appears to retain a largely original roof structure.