242 president's address. 



town itself, which sprang up around its base, is witness to the 

 importance of the Mote-Hill in the eyes of the Saxon and Danish 

 settlers in the valley. To them it was " the Work," par excel- 

 lence, of the whole district, the word being still so pronounced 

 in the native dialect, (as a " day's-wark," etc., compare Norse, 

 virhi, a mound, an entrenchment; Danish vcirge, to defend, and 

 wark, Eng. work, Naworth=Newark) ; and it appears in the local 

 nomenclature elsewhere as in the famous castles of Warkworth, 

 Wark on the Tweed, and Newark on the Trent. This name 

 corroborates the tradition of its partially artificial character 

 and origin, implying that even in these days it was considered 

 to be a "work" of hoary antiquity. On the opposite side of 

 North Tyne, in a ploughed field near Warkshaugh, is a remark- 

 able family barrow of pre-historic times, the examination of 

 which is described in the " Transactions" immediately preceding 

 Dr. Charlton's memoir, which I have now thought it well to 

 supplement by these further notices connected with the ancient 

 town of Wark, as perhaps being of some interest to our mem- 

 bers, who have now twice visited it.* 



Prom the Mote-Hill was pointed out the route which we had 

 proposed to take, if the elements had not still continued to fight 

 against us. It lay along the pleasant bank of the river, near the 

 picturesque grounds and mansion of Blindburn, the seat of Major- 

 General Allgood, C.B., and past the haunts of the Dipper, King- 

 fisher, and Grebe, and the Cinder Kiln Hills, or immense heaps 

 of iron scoriae, of unknown antiquity, near Birtley Wood. The 

 adjoining Carry House Camp, where explorations in the ancient 

 British Circular Dwellings have disclosed relics of Celtic, Roman, 

 and Saxon occupation, would have been next visited, and the 

 well-defined Terraced Slopes on the hill above it for early cereal 

 cultivation,! beyond which the Countess Park Woods, and the 

 precipitous "Clint Rocks" overhanging the river, with the 



* A field a little to the north of the modern church of Wark is called the " Kirk-doors," 

 in a document recording the division of the ancient town-field in 1715, as the Rev. John 

 Thompson informs me. Low Park End, Parkside, and the " Through-Gates, all seem to 

 refer to the former "royal park" of Wark and its boundaries on the south. 



t An Enquiry into the origin of certain Terraced Slopes in North Tynedale, Nat. Hist. 

 Trans., Vol. III., p. 32. Compare Archrcologia /Eliana, New Series, p. 8. 



