Transncfions. 45 



stones of the building have not been cleared away, or the 

 enclosures of the garden have been left standing, the sites may 

 be recognised ; otherwise the place is a blank. 



Tlie most reniarkal)le of these dilajaidated enclosures still left 

 standing, thougli greatly broken down and all but levelled with 

 the ground, is a group of broken-down dykes or garden enclosures 

 seen not far from Southwick old church. It is easily noticeable 

 from the parish road which passes the churchyard on the opposite 

 side of the valley, and anyone noticing it at once says, there 

 doubtless at one time stood a village under the protecting shadow 

 of the church. The village existed at a period anterior to the 

 time at which my paper begins, but not so long anterior as a 

 person looking at the relics may think. Mr Craik, tenant of 

 Nether Clifton, and whose father tenanted it before him— Mr 

 Craik wlio lived to 90 years of age, and died only a few years 

 ago — told me that he remembered one of the houses still standing 

 and occupied. 



The cottages of that period were of a rude and simple con- 

 struction — built of drystone wall, without lime ; they were 

 thatched with turf and straw if it could be got ; if not, with 

 brackens, heather, or reeds from the numerous lochs. The turf 

 consisted of thin flakes, or scraws as they were called, cut or 

 flayed from the moorland surface by a flauchter spade, the spade 

 used in stripping ofi* tlie top of the moss in peat casting. Sir 

 Walter Scott, who has rescued from oblivion so many of our 

 Scotch words, mentions the flauchter spade in "The Antiquary." 

 Many of the cottages were of a peculiar and highly primitive 

 construction. A pair of young tir or ash trees of suitable lengths 

 and thickness were placed, their butt ends resting on the ground 

 and their tops inclined the one to the other, but not so as to meet 

 and form a triangle, inclined so as to be say four or six feet apart. 

 At this distance they were bound together by a thick band or 

 strap of wood. This erected formed the gable of the building, 

 and was kept in its upright position by either stone or turf 

 building around it, or by a combination of stone and turf. A 

 second pair of young or sapling trees, treated in the same way, 

 were placed at a distance six feet from the first, and built round 

 in the same manner. A third and a fourth pair were similarly 

 treated, the fourtli pair forming the opposite gable. The spaces 

 between these upright pairs were covered with thin branches of 

 trees, popularly called rice, which formed the roof. These thin 



