PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 259 
fitted up as a Natural History Museum. The farm buildings, 
about half a mile from the college, are on a very large scale, and 
are fitted up with the most recent improvements. Leaving the 
college, the party traversed the crown of the hill towards Esh, 
and then descended towards the village of Lanchester, by a road 
and through farms in such a condition as is now rarely to be 
seen except in West Durham! After visiting the church, which 
was restored a few years ago, and has therefore lost most of its 
interesting features, the united party sat down to an excellent 
dinner at the inn. After dinner, some new members were 
elected, and several parties went off to visit the Roman station 
on the hill immediately above. It is a large and very perfect 
station, and several valuable antiquities and inscriptions have been 
discovered here. The remains of buildings can be observed in 
many places above the level of the soil, but although the present 
excellent proprietor, Matthew Kearney, Esq., of the Ford, takes 
every care to preserve the station, the pasturage within its pre- 
cincts is too valuable to allow of antiquarian research therein. 
At half-past seven the party returned to Newcastle, after a most 
agreeable day, favoured by fine weather. 
The excursion for July was boldly fixed on St. Swithin’s day, 
July 15, and the heights around Kielder, at the head of the 
North Tyne, were selected for the gathering. 
The day was fortunately magnificent, and the moors perfectly 
dry. From Bellingham, which had been visited two years 
before by the Club, the whole of the ground was quite new. 
The train swept along the north bank of the Tyne, passing the 
hamlet of Charlton, and directly after, through some moorland, 
the first piece of absolutely uncultivated ground that had yet 
been traversed. Almost all the way, however, up to WKielder, 
the line keeps within the pasture grounds or haughs by the side 
of the river. At Tarsett it cuts through the mound on which 
that ancient stronghold, the seat of the Comyns of Badenoch, 
once stood. Hardly a stone of the original building is left; the 
castle has probably remained in ruins ever since 1523, or there- 
abouts, when, according to the papers preserved in the Record 
Office, it was “ bruntte by ye Tyndaill men at a tyme when Sir 
