DB. OILIT ON NOEHAM CHURCH AND CHURCHYARD. 181 



made which conducts to the Tweed, and serves as an agree- 

 able summer evening promenade after the heat and toil of 

 the day. 



At the east end of the church, there is a large uneven 

 surface in the churchyard, where it is said that Mr. Lambe, 

 a former vicar, made excavations and found some curiously 

 carved stones. In the winter of 1832, and again in Decem- 

 ber 1833, workmen were employed to remove the earth on 

 this spot, and at irregular depths of from three to four feet 

 below the sods, traces were found of an ancient building, the 

 original destination of which antiquaries have not been 

 able to determine. Most probably this was the site of the 

 Saxon church of Egfrid, and previously of a Roman temple. 

 The excavations extended 74 feet in length, and nearly 40 

 in breadth. The foundations of side walls, and apparently 

 of cross walls two feet nine inches wide were discovered, and 

 vestiges of pavement twelve feet broad along the whole 

 length of the fabric, as if it had formed the aisle of a church, 

 or a passage leading to cells. In two or three places this 

 aisle or passage had portions of pavement running at right 

 angles with it, and extending the whole breadth of the build- 

 ing. The hewn stones were of various dimensions: some 

 of red sandstone, others of a harder texture, and one of 

 wynd-stone. Several of these were very large, some of them 

 bearing marks of Saxon and others of Roman times. In 

 different places carved stones were found. These have all 

 been preserved and built up in the form of the Bewcastle 

 Cross, and enclosed within iron rails. One of the carved 

 stones is the fragment of a Saxon tombstone, and still retains 

 the letters " P. Anima jElf. ;" another contains the figure 

 of a monk giving the benediction. The stones with the 

 Saxon letters, and the figure of a monk (probably to repre- 

 sent St. Cuthbert), with some others on the pillar within the 

 iron rails, were exhumed on a former occasion,* and were 

 left in the vicarage garden, as relics of ancient times, by the 



• Wallis, in his Antiquities of Nortliumbcrland, (vol. ii. p. 447), describes 

 a stone found with an ancient inscription, which he copied. It contained the 

 effigies of St. Peter with the keyg, of St. Cuthbert, and of King Ceolwulph 

 holding a sceptre. It is not known what became of this stone. 

 B. N. C. — VOL. II. NO. XIV. 



