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Windydoors Farm Bastle is a fortified farmhouse of probable 16th-century date located in Selkirkshire on the Scottish Borders. Built upon bedrock of the Gala Group wacke, the bastle exemplifies the defensive architecture that emerged in the Anglo-Scottish Marches during the period of cross-border raiding. Bastles combined secure ground-floor storage for livestock with living quarters above, reflecting the vulnerability of farming communities to cattle theft and armed incursion.
The structure stands on geology typical of the Southern Uplands, where hard wacke stone provided solid foundation and building material. This durable sandstone was quarried locally and shaped into the thick walls characteristic of bastle construction. The location in Selkirkshire places the monument within a landscape scattered with similar defensive farmhouses, each positioned to serve communities engaged in pastoralism on marginal land where security against raiding was as essential as shelter from weather.
Windydoors Farm Bastle is protected as a scheduled monument by Historic Environment Scotland under reference SM13691. The monument survives as a testament to the social and economic pressures that shaped rural settlement patterns in the Borders during the early modern period, when small-scale fortification offered the most practical defence available to farming families.
Windydoors Farm, Bastle is a scheduled monument protected by Historic Environment Scotland under reference SM13691. View the official record →
Windydoors Farm Bastle is a fortified farmhouse of probable 16th-century date located in Selkirkshire on the Scottish Borders. It is designated a Scheduled Ancient Monument by Historic Environment Scotland under reference SM13691.
Windydoors Farm, Bastle is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, legally protected by Historic Environment Scotland — the body responsible for designating and safeguarding heritage sites in Scotland. The official designation reference is SM13691.
Several scheduled monuments lie within 10 km, including Yair,fort,Oakbank Wood (6.8 km), Rink Hill,fort 700m NE of (8.5 km), Wallace's Trench,linear earthwork (8.5 km).
This page is just one thread. A full Aubrey report pulls together 14 strands of Windydoors Farm, Bastle's history, each drawn from the record and mapped to the exact spot:
Every location is different. Not every section appears for every place, only what the historical record actually holds turns up in a report.
Windydoors Farm, Bastle stands on Gala Group, bedrock that formed in the Telychian. The rock here is wacke.