An account of the discovery, survey, consolidation, excavations and research of a 17th-century defensive farmhouse and buildings in Clydesdale, with supplementary contextual information.
This Glenochar Bastle House and Fermtoun report replaces all previous works on the site, but much is repeated from the earlier report; a limited edition and other articles published by the writer (Ward 19981,2&3) as part of the celebrations to open the heritage trail the same year. However, considerably more material and detail are given here along with photographs and other images.
In 1986 the site was brought to the attention of the group of voluntary archaeologists who later became the formal team known as Biggar Archaeological Group (BAG), working from their base in Biggar Museums, whose archaeological work has all been voluntary since 1981, when the first bastle house in Clydesdale was discovered and later excavated and consolidated in the same manner as Glenochar (Gillanders 1986 & Ward 2016). By 1986 a formal study was underway; the Clydesdale Bastle Project, to explore the possibility that further sites lay undiscovered in the Scottish Lowlands but further afield from the Anglo Scottish border where such sites were long recognised. The hypothesis was proved true and research on the subject continues.
The site is now a Scheduled Ancient Monument.
