Hopehead Farmhouse And Adjacent Buildings

Hopehead Farmhouse and adjacent buildings is a bastle house dating from the late 16th century or early 17th century, with a second floor added in the late 17th century. The farmhouse and barn to the southwest were built in the 18th century and altered in the 19th century. The bastle is constructed from rubble with roughly-shaped quoins and has a 20th-century asbestos roof. The house and barn are made of rubble with cut quoins, featuring stone slate roofs and stone stacks.

The house is three storeys tall with two wide bays. The ground floor has an inserted cart entrance with a timber lintel, flanked by blocked windows. The first and second floors have altered sash windows. The barn to the left is also three storeys high with various openings. The bastle to the right has three storeys and two bays. The second floor features two square windows with chamfered surrounds, positioned above the roof of a later outbuilding. Internally, recesses for the first-floor door and flanking windows are visible.

On the right return, the bastle's end wall has a chamfered Tudor-arched door with an illegible lintel inscription. The rear elevation shows that the house has an outshut with various openings. The bastle includes a small first-floor window with a chamfered surround, and to the right, there is an enlarged ground-floor loop with an inserted pitching door above. The interior of the bastle reveals inserted 18th-century fireplaces and the scar of an earlier hood, as well as a central upper-cruck roof truss.

This bastle is one of the best preserved in Northumberland, and the late 17th-century heightening is similar to that found at Hole Bastle in Bellingham parish.