af 
i Poel 
FIELD MEETINGS. 197 
feet in length, by four broad. There is no air-hole in the walls, 
although we understand there was one communicating, not with 
the outer air, but with a vaulted chamber below, which has now 
been overlaid by soil. The entrance is now covered by a thick 
board. Probably a stone flag would be used when the tower was 
inhabited. In any case, whenever the chief or any of the house- 
hold left the banqueting hall to go to the bed-chambers or to the 
battlements they must have walked over the head of the wretch 
occupying the dark and noisome cell. It would hardly seem 
necessary to starve one kept under such conditions: he could be 
poisoned by merely keeping the door shut. We reproduce at the 
end of this article the ballad in which Robert Chambers has 
enshrined the doleful seventeenth century tale. Mr Chapman, 
factor on Applegarth estate, accompanied the party on their 
visit to the tower, and in the great hall he read the following 
notes regarding its history and architecture :-— 
“Spedlins Tower, the ancient seat of the Jardine family, is 
a fine specimen of the plain square tower or keep, of which there 
are many examples in the Border district. It measures 46 ft. 6 
in. long by 39 ft. wide, and 48 ft. high to the eaves. There have 
been four floors, viz., the basement, 10 ft. in height ; the principal 
floor, consisting chiefly of a hall measuring 28 ft. by 20 ft. 6 in., 
by 18 ft. high; the third floor, which evidently consisted of four 
rooms 10 ft. high; and the fourth floor, which also bears evidence 
of four rooms 8 ft. in height. Above that again there seems to 
have been an attic floor. The walls of the two lower stories are 
very strong and substantially built, being from 9 ft. to 10 ft. in 
thickness. The walls of the upper portion are much thinner, 
being from 3 ft. to 3 ft. 6 in. thick. The lower floors are con- 
structed on arches reaching across the full width of the building, 
while the upper floors have been carried on wooden joists, the 
joist-holes being still seen in the walls. Both Grose and 
M‘Gibbon, the authorities on Scottish antiquities and castellated 
architecture, were of opinion that the two vaulted stories were 
built in the fifteenth century, and that the date 1605, on the 
square tablet at the top of the Tower on the east side, represents 
the date of the additional two stories. The tablet bears a coat- 
of-arms as well as the date, of which I have taken an impression 
and have made a drawing from it as shown. I have also noted 
the following differences between the lower and upper portions, 
v. 
& 
