Former bastle at How Hill, converted to a two-storey farmhouse

Former Bastle at How Hill

This building began as a bastle in the late 16th or early 17th century and was subsequently remodelled into a two-storey farmhouse during the mid to later 18th century. It has undergone further alterations in the early 21st century.

The structure is built of rubble stone with roughly coursed boulders beneath a pitched roof of Westmorland slate with stone slab coping stones. An east brick gable chimney stack sits upon an earlier stone chimney base. The building is rectangular in plan, oriented north to south, measuring approximately 8.5 metres north to south by 7.5 metres east to west, with walls between 0.9 and 0.95 metres thick.

The north elevation retains rough, gritty stonework of loosely-coursed boulders with massive quoins, both characteristic of typical bastle stonework from the late 16th or early 17th century. A single small, splayed first floor window set immediately beneath the eaves is considered an 18th-century insertion, positioned within stonework of different colour and size. A recent large opening (dating to early 2018) and a recently created ground floor opening also pierce this elevation. The east gable is constructed of variable-sized rubble stonework, though it is mostly obscured by thick render to the ground floor and the roof of an attached building. A ground floor entrance may represent a modified original byre entrance, with an adjacent ground floor entrance to the left considered to relate to the building's 18th-century use. The south elevation is partially obscured by render but appears to be composed of smaller rubble stonework with neater though substantial quoins. Three internally splayed window openings with finely-tooled square and chamfered 18th-century surrounds pierce this elevation, alongside blocked historic windows at both ground and first floor levels. The west gable is blind and contains large stonework consistent with an early date. A full-height hole approximately one metre wide, recently created in the north-west corner, breaks through the masonry.

Internally, the east wall retains a first floor entrance with a historic timber lintel, interpreted as the original first floor entrance originally reached externally by a ladder. To its right lies a rectangular recess within the wall thickness, interpreted as a cupboard. A substantial first floor beam with a chamfered underside remains in place, formerly supporting the stone slate floor of the room above. No trace survives of the former first floor heat source, which would typically have been located at the centre of the east wall between the ground and first floor entrances. The south-west corner contains a small stone chimney piece with a stone hob-grate and brick flue, thought to be 18th-century in origin and related to the present external chimney stack. The modified historic roof structure features double purlins, a ridge piece and rafters, with a single composite roof truss containing early tie-beams and some sawn elements, supported on a corbel at the north end with a king post braced to the ridge.