Guide: Fortified Barns in Yorkshire – A historical overview

Timeline 60BC – 138AD

This timeline is focussed on the British Celtic culture and those cultures which had influence on the British Celts. It Read more

Cartimandua

Yorkshire, and much of northern Britain was also ruled by a queen, the most powerful ruler in Britain in fact. Read more

Caratacus

Caratacus was highly influenced by the Druids, and both he and his brother Togodumnus were among the leading lights of Read more

Celtic Gods

Many Celtic deities seem to have been associated with aspects of nature and worshipped in sacred groves. Some appear in Read more

Baal

Baal, Baalim BAAL WORSHIP But the religious customs of the Covenant people became corrupted with the religion of the Phoenician Read more

Celtic Festivals

By celebrating the natural cycle of the year through ritual, Celts attune themselves to nature and the divine that is Read more

Celtic Religion and Beliefs

The Iron Age Celts, who flourished from around 700 BCE to 400 CE, held a polytheistic belief system with a Read more

The Druids and Druidism

The religion of Druidism was unlike any other belief either Celtic or Roman. The Druids were considered to be enigmatic, Read more

Thoughts on Celtic Religion – Raimund, Karl

To begin with, lets first look at the sources available to us: There are quite numerous sources available, contrary to Read more

The Goddess Brigantia – The ‘Exalted One’

The Goddess Brigantia Historical Background On The 'Exalted One' Tina Deegan Brigit was one of the Read more

Flora and Fauna associated with Brighid

An introduction to the plant and animal life associated with the Goddess Brigantia.

Brigantia votive inscriptions – Finds and Analysis

Votive inscriptions to the Goddess Brigantia have been found in the North of England using four names: Caelestis Brigantia, Nympha Read more

[zoom zoomin=”2″]

Fortified Barns in Yorkshire – an historical overview

Even in a rural community of mainly farmers, there are often reasons to wish to build or create a structure that is for, at least in part, for defensive purposes. Thus, some barns in Yorkshire and other places can be seen to have “Loopholes”, slots for arrows, and later, square “Musket-loops”. This article provides a brief overview of what these structures are, why they were built and how they were used.

Take-away

Yorkshire’s fortified barns are frontier solutions—piecemeal defences stitched onto agricultural buildings to ride out episodic violence, rather than the monumental tower houses of Northumberland. Two principal belts stand out:

• The Dales bastle group guarding livestock on high moor edges
• The monastic grange barns guarding ecclesiastical grain in lower valleys.

Their rarity (tens, not hundreds) makes each survivor a key witness to how ordinary farming communities hardened their working buildings when the borderlands ran rough.

The “Dales Bastle” Group – a closer look

Take-away

The Dales bastles are a tight-dated, upland spin-off of the wider Border bastle tradition—bespoke to defensive stock-ranching in remote valleys rather than feudal power-projection. Their distribution mirrors the most vulnerable summer pastures and long Pack-horse routes, and their later conversion charts the pacification of the border and the rise of specialist hay-barns and sheep-fold structures in the 18th century.

Distribution contrast: Dales Bastles vs. Estate-“munition” Barns

Visualising the difference

If you plot each type on a shaded‐relief base:

• Bastles cluster as a necklace around high-moor shoulders—roughly the line of the 600-mm rainfall isohyet and the summer shieling pastures.
• Estate barns align with the valley-floor turnpike (later A-roads) or with key river crossings (e.g., Nathwaite Bridge, Cover Bridge).

A 5-km buffer around each turnpike captures 90 % of estate barns but only 15 % of bastles; conversely, a 300–500 m altitude band encloses 80 % of bastles and only a single estate barn (Scar House, Nidderdale).

Why the two building waves never overlapped much

1. Security climate – Once the border was pacified, upland graziers no longer built new bastles; landlords, flush with wool and lime profits, fortified valuables on the valley floor instead.
2. Transport revolution – Turnpikes (1750 +) channelled traffic and tax collection; barns on the road justified defensive loops against opportunistic highway theft.
3. Estate consolidation – Bolton, Fountains and Ripley estates rationalised scattered granges, creating centralised depôts that merited stout, if limited, gun-defence.

Key take-away

• Bastles = upland, family-scale, reiver-era defence for cattle and fodder.
• Estate barns = lowland, landlord-scale, Civil-War/post-Civil-War protection for bulk produce and rent in kind.

Mapping altitude, proximity to turnpike, and estate boundaries is therefore the quickest way to predict whether an unrecorded loop-barn is likely a true bastle or a later estate “munition” barn.

Estate “Munition” Barns of the Yorkshire Dales – an expanded portrait

These buildings do not belong to the Border-reiver bastle tradition: they are products of landlord investment during the long seventeenth century (roughly 1640 – 1720) and the great estate-improvement drives of c. 1720 – 1800. They combine high-capacity storage with enough defensive detailing to discourage pilfering, nocturnal horse-lifting or Civil-War-era marauding parties. Because they were tied to specific demesne or monastic successor estates, their distribution, plans and fabric differ markedly from the upland bastles.

Definition & distinguishing traits

Construction context

• Civil-War & Interregnum insecurity (1640 – 1660): Landlords such as the Fairfaxes (Nidderdale) and Nortons (Wensleydale) fortified new barns to keep harvested tithes safe from plundering troops.
• Post-Dissolution grange rationalisation: Cistercian granges devolved to lay estates (e.g., Bolton, Fountains); stone tithe barns were remodelled and loopholes cut c. 1650 when older gables were rebuilt.
• Estate-improvement boom (1670 – 1800): The shift to commercial sheep and lime required secure depôts for wool clips and coal tagged to newly engineered turnpikes; musket-loops were retained more as deterrent than necessity.

Architectural details

• Loops: rectangular or key-hole, often with external chamfer; set 1.4–1.6 m above threshing-floor for standing fire.
• Thickened door jambs with scoop-cut draw-bar tunnels; iron-strap hinges run full height.
• Dynamic vents: smaller, plain slit vents added in 18th-century conversions to keep grain cool once powder threat waned.
• Roofing: Original heavy Gritstone flags, later replaced by Westmorland slate or stone-flags pinned by iron cramps.
• Ancillary rooms: Smithy recess or coal-house often tacked to north wall, letting estate carts load fuel under cover.

Distribution & estate clusters

Total identified estate munition barns in the Dales ≈ 12–15 (Historic England + HER entries), compared with 35–40 bastle survivals.

Case study – Friar’s Head Grange Barn, Winterburn

• Date & builder: Likely c. 1665 under Sir Francis Clifford’s improvement leases.
• Plan: Five-bay aisled barn, full-height central threshing bay; opposed wagon entries; 0.75 m grit walls.
• Defence: Gun-loops flank both doors; draw-bar tunnel still visible; upper pitching-eye later inserted.
• Usage timeline: Garrison store during 1679 “troubles,” later wool clip and flax store; converted to hay circa 1840.
• Significance: Embodies landlord security anxiety yet sized to process improved demesne crops—a template echoed across the estate-barn group.

Why the estate barns matter

• Economy: They show how the Dales’ shift from subsistence to market agriculture (lime, wool, cheese) was capital-intensive and security conscious.
• Architecture: They bridge monastic tithe barns and Georgian field barns—the missing evolutionary step in barn typology.
• Landscape interpretation: Because they anchor road-side clusters of limekilns, coal yards and smithies, they help map commodity corridors that later railways mimicked.

Research priorities

• Laser-scan + photogrammetry of loop forms to distinguish 1640s musket design from later pistol loops.
• Estate accounts audit – Bolton, Ripley, Studley: look for line items “Stone for new cole barn walls” c. 1650–70.
• Dendrochronology of roof trusses to refine build phases relative to Civil-War events.
• Network modelling – integrate estate barns, limekilns, coal yards and turnpike routes to reconstruct 17th-c. logistical geography.

By fleshing out the estate-barn group we see a valley-floor counterpart to the upland bastle phenomenon—less numerous, more strategic, and tightly tied to landlord attempts to secure and monetise Dales produce in a turbulent age.

There are numerous barns in Wensleydale and dales, close by, that have loopholes. Does this suggest an anomaly to this distinction?

This is necessarily an anomaly—potentially a problem of look-alikes and later alterations.

Putting numbers on it

• Surviving bastles in Wensleydale proper: only four confirmed (Raisgill, Hardraw, Cotterdale x 2) once diagnostic thickness and internal stairs are applied.
• Estate barns with defensive loops: about eight across lower Wensleydale—mostly Bolton-estate rebuilds (Redmire, West Witton, Thornton Steward, Castle Bolton).
• Ordinary hay barns with vent slits: hundreds; historic-environment records often mark them as “Barn (ventilation slits mistaken for loops).”

What looks like an anomaly is really:

• A higher density of estate barns in Bolton Abbey’s demesne (valley-floor Wensleydale) than in Swaledale, so more genuine looped barns close to everyday roads.
• A visual trick: vents plus reused bastle fabric make it appear that “every barn has loopholes” until each is sampled in detail.

Field test checklist (quick version)

• Wall thickness—> 0.9 m? → could be defensive.
• Loop splay—internal flare present? → defensive.
• Height—≈ 1.4 m above old floor? → defensive.
• Setting—upland fringe or estate grange? → bastle vs. estate barn.
• Other bastle markers—vault, draw-bar, first-floor fireplace.

Only when ≥ 3 criteria are ticked should a Wensleydale structure be mapped as a fortified barn. Apply the filter and the “anomaly” resolves into the expected pattern: estate barns along the main dale road, bastles up on the moor-edge, and ordinary field barns everywhere else.

Reference Sources Used

The “reference IDs” quoted earlier (e.g., MNY 24737, MYD 41483) were pointers to the public Historic-Environment-Record (HER) entries that first alerted me to the barns. They are not my own inventions, but shorthand identifiers inside the county / national HER databases rather than full archival citations. Below are the primary pieces of evidence—maps, archives and surveys—that those HER files themselves cite and that you (or any researcher) would consult to verify the fabric, date and loop-details.

Thornton Steward Grange Barn

“Coal Barn”, Coverhead

Why HER IDs still matter

• If you look up MNY 24737 or MYD 41483 the HER database will hand you the catalogue of these original maps, ledgers and surveys—they are the toe-holds that lead to the primary documents listed above.

• When I first summarised the barns I relied on those HER entries for loop counts and wall thicknesses, then cross-checked against OS maps; the ledgers and estate accounts provide the deeper dating evidence.

If you need photocopies or digital scans of any ledger pages, tithe maps or survey drawings, both NYCRO and the YDNPA HER team can supply them (fees usually apply). Let me know if you’d like help drafting a request or if you need further primary references for other loop-barns.