.....And battles, long ago

The Cheviot still hides its head

 Still on the trail of the elusive Battle of Piperdean, I contacted the Department of Archaeology at Northumberland County Council  who were most helpful and referred me to the Transactions of The Berwickshire Naturalists, an esteemed body  known locally as “The Nats”.   It seems I was following old tracks for, in the accounts of 1910, there was a report asking the same question …

where was the battle of Piperdean?

Piperdean

The conclusion was that it was fought near Wark on the River Tweed, at a farm called Pressen where, indeed, there is a small valley, on the Pressen Burn, called Piperdean.  The farmer was well aware of the  supposed history of the site.

Piperdean looking east

Piperdean looking west

The explanation given in the Nats report is that Ridpath in his Border History in 1776 confused the battle with that of Chevy Chase, which, in turn, was often conflated and confused with the Battle of Otterburn.
 This is apparently the reason for Piperdean being described as “on the  River Breamish near the Cheviot” but this explanation falls down as Otterburn is nowhere near the Breamish either.

 It  seems there were just so many conflicts across the Debatable Lands as they were known, that folk had difficulty recalling who killed who and where and when.   The date of Piperdean is not even  accurately  known… sometimes 1435... sometimes 1436.
 The violence continued for nearly two more centuries and the farm of Pressen has a fortified bastle -house incorporated into the farm steading.

The crow-stepped gable of the bastle in the farm steading

Now a farm workshop, the massive masonry of the bastle is still  there

Built a hundred years after Piperdean, its massive walls still showed the need for the defence of people and livestock in those lawless days.



The search has been fun and has highlighted some hidden corners of our countryside and its colourful past.

Wikipedia has been corrected…again.