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'King Edwin's Palace' is a much altered and mutilated building; all its visible features except for the fabric of its side walls seem to relate to its use as one or two cottages (in the 19th century) or its 20th century conversion into a farm outbuilding. A consideration of some published sources is necessary before its real significance can be assessed.

Tomlinson's Guide to Northumberland (c. 1912, 504) gives a valuable description of the building prior at least to the second conversion:

'A long, low quadrangular cottage at Old Yeavering .... is said, by tradition, to have formed part of King Edwin's Palace. The masonry is certainly of a very rude type, but there is nothing to show that it belongs to so early a date as the seventh century. The walls are five feet thick, built of porphyry blocks, but not in regular courses, and seemingly without lime. Squared oak posts pass perpendicularly through the middle of the walls, giving stability to them, and supporting the roof. Old doorways and windows, with squared headings, are traceable. It may have been a rude pele-tower, though not of the common type, which has a vaulted chamber on the ground floor.'

There is now no visible evidence of Tomlinsons 'squared oak posts', which is unfortunate, as the description suggests that the building was a survivor of an unusual type, unrecorded elsewhere in the county. The thickness of the walls suggest that it was intended to be a defensible structure, and the use of timber links it to the 'peles' of Tynedale recorded in the 1541 survey. The remains of the substantial wall enclosing the small field on the south may also imply a defensive role, and a barmkin or yard attached to the main building.

Christopher Dacre's 1584 'plat' or map of 'castles and fortresses' (reproduced by Long in Castles of Northumberland, 1967, rear endpaper) shows a line of defensible buildings (indicated by drawings of small house like structures) in this area, including Akeld (presumably the building now known as 'Akeld Castle'), Yeavering, East Newton and West Newton. It seems highly likely that the building shown at Yeavering (which does not figure in the 1541 Border survey) is in fact ' King Edwin's Palace' ; its dimensions (at present 17 x 7 -7.5m, but probably originally a little longer) correspond almost exactly with those of Akeld Bastle (19 x 7.3m), although in its having a stone-vaulted ground floor Akeld is clearly a rather superior building.

Conversion to cottages may have taken place In the late 18th or 19th century; only the side walls of the original building seem to have been utilised in these. The west end seems to have been rebuilt a little to the east of the original line. The east end has been similarly rebuilt, although the strangely thick cross wall in the eastern adjunct (otherwise probably of 19th century date) could be the original east wall. The second conversion, to a farm building, in relatively recent years, has erased much of the character of the building.

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