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Thief Sike
Field System (Medieval) - (Post Medieval), Pen (Post Medieval), Quarry (Period Unknown), Rig And Furrow (Medieval) - (Post Medieval), Township (Medieval) - (Post Medieval)
Site Name Thief Sike
Classification Field System (Medieval) - (Post Medieval), Pen (Post Medieval), Quarry (Period Unknown), Rig And Furrow (Medieval) - (Post Medieval), Township (Medieval) - (Post Medieval)
Canmore ID 162547
Site Number NY49SE 38
NGR NY 4938 9322
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/162547
- Council Scottish Borders, The
- Parish Castleton
- Former Region Borders
- Former District Roxburgh
- Former County Roxburghshire
Field Visit (15 February 1996)
NY49SE 38 4938 9322
On the E bank of Thief's Sike there is a township comprising up to eleven buildings, four enclosures, a field-system and some rig.
The main group of buildings, numbering seven in all, occupy the rear of a terrace in the middle of the field-system. Four more structures, which may be huts or buildings, are scattered across the NNW part of the field-system (LID96 11-13). The buildings in the main group are aligned roughly from N to S and range in size from 6.2m to 11.6m in length by between 2.9m and 4.3m in breadth within faced-rubble walls up to 0.9m in thickness and 0.45m in height. Where visible, the entrances are in the E side. Only one building shows any sign of sub-division, and this has two compartments (LID96 4); another has an outshot at one end (LID96 8). A short distance S of this group of buildings there is a drystone sheep-pen or bucht (NY 4942 9319).
The other four structures vary more widely in size. Two are small huts on the fringes of the fields (LID96 10, NY 4934 9327 and LID96 13, NY 4925 9342), measuring 3.4m and 3.7m in length respectively by 2m in breadth. The other two are somewhat larger. One is situated within a field and measures 7.1m by 2.6m within walls 0.9m in thickness and up to 0.3m in height (LID96 11, NY 4930 9332); the other, situated at the N end of the fields. The latter hut has been truncated on its S by the construction of a field-bank (LID96 12, NY 4925 9340), and its W end has been disturbed by the excavation of a quarry in the side of the burn, but it may have been a building, measuring at least 14.2m by 4.8m overall.
The field-system comprises four blocks of subrectangular, earthen-banked fields. Whilst two lie adjacent to the main settlement on the N and S, the other two lie across an unnamed burn to the E. The bank of the field to the S overlies the southernmost building of the main settlement (LID96 3). Rig is visible in most of the fields, but there is also some evidence of more recent cultivation that has flattened the rig, especially in the fields to the N of the main settlement. The best preserved patch of rig is in the lower field S of the main settlement.
Although the settlement cannot be identified certainly with any documented farmstead, Blaeu's atlas (Blaeu 1654) depicts Brocol' to the W of Langhaugh at about this location. Medieval rentals refer to Brokelle in 1376 (Reg. Hon. Mort. 1853) and to Brocholey in 1541 (Stuart and Burnett 1897). However, the name does not reappear in any subsequent documentation and, if this identification is correct, the settlement appears to have been abandoned in the course of the late-16th or early-17th century.
(LID96 3-13)
Visited by RCAHMS (PJD) 15 February 1996
J Blaeu 1654; Reg.Hon.Mort.1853; J Stuart and G Burnett 1897
