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Carfrae Bastle

bastle house in Scottish Borders, Scotland, UK

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 25, 2025
Entity authorityQ60766866
Source-derived summary

Carfrae Bastle is a small ruined tower house about 5 miles (8.0 km) north of Lauder, Scottish Borders, Scotland, near Hillhouse

History

Carfrae Bastle is of medieval origin. The bastle has a strategic position commanding the passes from Upper Lauderdale into Lothian, by way of Glengelt and Kelphope glens. Carfrae is first mentioned in a charter in which William de Morville, son of Richard de Morville, Lord of Lauderdale, grants the lands and barony of Carfrae to Henry St Clair, in around 1196. The barony encompassed much of the eastern part of the parish of Channelkirk.

Structure

The overgrown remains of rubble masonry stand to first floor height. The structure, 10.5 metres (34 ft) by 5.5 metres (18 ft), is divided into two compartments. There is a vaulted basement while the remains of a round stair-tower stand in the southeast angle.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Carfrae Bastle” is bastle house in Scottish Borders, Scotland, UK. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Carfrae, Bastle and bastle, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1196—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Carfrae, Bastle and bastle is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “bastle house in Scottish Borders, Scotland, UK” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 25, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q60766866. Authority coordinates are 55.786, -2.796. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1196.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Carfrae Bastle” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.