Peel towers (also spelt pele) are small fortified keeps or tower houses, built along the English and Scottish Borders, intended as watch towers where signal fires could be lit by the garrison to warn of approaching danger. A tower house is a particular type of stone structure built for defensive purposes as well as habitation. The border country is the area either side of the Anglo-Scottish border including parts of the modern Council areas of Dumfries and Galloway and the Beacons are aids to Navigation devices Intentionally conspicuous beacons help guide navigators to their destinations By an Act of Parliament in 1455 each of these towers was required to have an iron basket on its summit and a smoke or fire signal, for day or night use, ready at hand. This article is a List of Parliaments of England Devolved English Parliament is about the debate on a devolved parliament for England The smoke signal is one of the oldest forms of communication in recorded history
A line of these towers was built in the 1430s across the Tweed valley from Berwick to its source, as a response to the dangers of invasion from the English Marches. There are other rivers with this name see Tweed River The River Tweed ( Uisge Thuaidh in Gaelic (156 kilometres or long flows primarily through the Others were built in Cumberland, Westmorland and Northumberland, and as far south as Lancashire, in response to the threat of attack from the Scots and the Border Reivers of both nationalities. Cumberland is one of the 39 Historic counties of England. It formed an administrative county from 1889 to 1974 (excluding Carlisle from 1915 and now forms part of Westmorland (formerly also spelt Westmoreland, an even older spelling is Westmerland) is an area of north-west England and one of the 39 Historic counties Northumberland is a county in the North East of England. The non-metropolitan county of Northumberland borders Cumbria to the west Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England, bounded to the west by the Irish Sea Border Reivers were raiders along the Anglo - Scottish border ( Border country) for nearly three hundred years from the late 13th century
Apart from their primary purpose as a warning system, these towers were the homes of the Lairds and landlords of the area, who dwelt in them with their families and retainers, while their followers lived in simple huts outside the walls. A Laird (Lord is a Hereditary title for the owner of a landed estate in Scotland. Landlord is the owner of a House, Apartment, Condominium, or Real estate which is rented or Leased to an individual or business The towers also provide a refuge so that, when cross-border raiding parties arrived, the whole population of a village could take to the tower and wait for the marauders to depart.
In the upper Tweed valley, going downstream from its source, they were as follows: Fruid, Hawkshaw, Oliver, Polmood, Kingledoors, Mossfennan, Wrae Tower, Quarter, Stanhope, Drumelzier, Tinnies, Dreva, Stobo, Dawyck, Easter Happrew, Lyne, Barnes, Caverhill, Neidpath, Peebles, Horsburgh, Nether Horsburgh, Cardrona, etc. Hawkshaw is the ancestral family home of the Porteous family on the River Tweed just two miles southwest of Tweedsmuir in the Oliver Castle is the site of a small Tower house, located in the upper Tweed Valley in the Scottish Borders, within the bounds of the village of Tweedsmuir Polmood is a small settlement in southern Scotland near Tweedsmuir in the Scottish Borders, in the valley of the River Tweed. Kingledoors is a group of settlements in a valley in southern Scotland near Tweedsmuir in the Scottish Borders, in the valley of the River Tweed Wrae Tower is a ruined 16th century stone Tower house, located in the upper Tweed Valley in the Scottish Borders, and similarly south of the village of Drumelzier (pronounced "drummellier" - see Yogh) is a village in the Tweed Valley in the Scottish Borders. Neidpath Castle is a L-plan rubble built tower overlooking the River Tweed about 1 mile (2 km west of Peebles in the Borders of Scotland Peebles ( Gaelic: Na Pùballan is a Burgh in the Committee area of Tweeddale, in the Scottish Borders,
Peel towers are not usually found in larger places which have a castle, but in smaller settlements. A castle is a defensive structure seen as one of the main symbols of the Middle Ages. A town is a type of settlement ranging from a few to several thousand (occasionally hundreds of thousands inhabitants although it may be applied loosely even to huge metropolitan They are often associated with a church: for example Embleton Tower in Embleton, Northumberland is a fine example of a so-called vicar's pele and the one at Hulne Priory is in the grounds of the priory. Embleton Tower is a Grade I listed building in the village of Embleton in Northumberland. Embleton Village ( in the English county of Northumberland is about half-a-mile from the beautiful bay which carries its name In the broadest sense a vicar (from the Latin Vicarius) is a representative anyone acting "in the person of" or agent for a superior Hulne Priory is a Monastery founded in the 13th century by the Carmelites, or "White Friars" which was one of the Orders of Mendicants bound by their rule A priory is a House of men or women under religious vows headed by a Prior or prioress Hawkshaw, ancestral home of the Porteous family at Tweedsmuir in Peeblesshire, a peel tower dating from at least 1439, no longer stands but its site is marked by a cairn. The Porteous family is an ancient Scottish Borders Armigerous family The counties of Scotland were the principal divisions of Scotland until 1975 A cairn ( carn in Irish is an artificial pile of stones often in a conical form
Nowadays some towers are derelict while others have been converted for use in peacetime; Embleton Tower is now part of the (former) vicarage and that on the Inner Farne is a home to bird wardens. Embleton Tower is a Grade I listed building in the village of Embleton in Northumberland. The Farne Islands (also referred to less formally as the Farnes) are a group of islands off the coast of Northumberland, England. The most obvious conversion needs will include access, which was originally difficult, and the provision of more and larger windows.
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See also
- Tower house
- Bastle house
- Manor house
- Corby Castle
- Dovenby Hall
- Embleton Tower
- Gawthorpe Hall
- Kentmere
- Turton Tower
- Ponteland pele tower
This article incorporates text from the public domain 1907 edition of The Nuttall Encyclopædia. A tower house is a particular type of stone structure built for defensive purposes as well as habitation. Bastle houses are found along the Anglo - Scottish border in the areas formerly plagued by Border Reivers. A manor house or fortified manor-house is a Country house, which has historically formed the administrative centre of a manor (see Manorialism Corby Castle is an ancestral home of the Howard family situated on the southern edge of the Village of Great Corby in northern Cumbria Dovenby Hall is a Grade II listed Country house in Dovenby, 2½ miles north-west of Cockermouth, Cumbria, England. Embleton Tower is a Grade I listed building in the village of Embleton in Northumberland. Gawthorpe Hall, a National Trust property is an Elizabethan house situated southeast of the small town of Padiham, in the borough of Burnley Kentmere Valley ( is situated in the Lake District National Park, a few miles from Kendal, Cumbria, England. Turton was a township and later civil parish and local government district in Lancashire, England. The public domain is a range of abstract materials &ndash commonly referred to as Intellectual property &ndash which are not owned or controlled by anyone The Nuttall Encyclopædia: Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge is an early-20th-century Encyclopedia, edited by
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