Boghead (bastle house)

Boghead, also known variously as Bog Head, Corby Castle, Corbie Castle, Corbie's Castle, Barty's Pele, or Borbie Castle, is a 16th-century bastle house in Tarset, Northumberland. Bastles are fortified farm houses built in the early modern period in the Anglo-Scottish marches. They were designed to provide shelter to farmers and their livestock, who faced the threat of raids from border reivers. The Boghead site consists of remains of the bastle itself as well as the remains of two farmhouses and a sheepfold. Boghead is one of several bastles on the banks of Tarset Burn, a small river, and one of many in the wider North Tynedale area. Local folklore associates Boghead with the story of Barty Milburn and Corbit Jack, who undertook a retaliatory raid against Scots who had stolen sheep. According to the story, Barty killed two Scots, one of whom killed Corbit Jack, before returning with sheep. Barty Milburn may be the Bartrame Mylburne who reported an attack led by Kinmont Willie Armstrong on the people of Tynedale, including the people of Boghead, in 1583, which was the year Boghead entered the historical record. The site remained in use in the more peaceful following decades, but had seemingly fallen out of use by 1770. The site is a scheduled monument and the main bastle building is a Grade II listed building. It has national significance as a rare example of a relatively unmodified bastle building; as one of several surviving bastles in the local area; and because it features a "quenching hole", an unusual defensive feature to put out fires lit against the ground-floor doorway. The site is publicly accessible as part of the Tarset Bastle Trail. Writing in 2020, the journalist Katie Gatens described it as "a bastle slumped in the long grass, finally conquered by thick moss".