Beetham Hall Farm

This is a place I would love to have a wander around inside and out, Beetham Hall.  Its span of history means that it has evolved, crumbled and expanded through the centuries.  Today it is a private dwelling and farm owned by the Wilsons of Dallam Tower.  The buildings to the right have not been lived in since the 17th Century but its origins are a 14th Century hall-and-cross-wing house.  There may originally also have been more storeys carried up into towers. This is the view from the footpath that runs behind the buildings however

Photo from: Old Cumbria Gazetteer

 for those coming in to the south Lake District Peninsula the view from the A6 road is the most familiar and it also gives a better view of the Barmkin Wall, which is a defensive enclosure around Pele Towers.  Not to be confused with Barm Cake, a large soft bread bun found in Lancashire or the slang term 'you barmpot' when someone has done something idiotic.  No-one knows the origin of any of those words, like the building they have just evolved, but Barm itself is a fermenting yeast.

Here you can just make out the arrow-slits for any marauders coming into the area and the sturdy chimneys on the house for those cold winters of the past.

Here is the full patchwork of buildings with the farm buildings on the left.  There are blocked doorways, doorways that used to be windows and dates inscribed of 1693 and 1799 and so much going on that the description in  Pevsner Architectural Guide to the county calls it a "complicated site" 

Photographs taken it was time to resume our walk and we left behind the limestone farm and stronghold and headed for the woods.  Matthew Emmott of 'Castles, Towers and Fortified Buildings of Cumbria' took a more detailed close up photographic trip around the site here

An entry to ABC Wednesday, a journey through the alphabet, this week sojourning at B here