14 pkesident's address. 



invasion. Joining the rest of our party, who seemed rather 

 aggrieved by the length of time we had kept them waiting, 

 under the guidance of Mr. Pox, the gardener, we traversed the 

 grounds of Cresswell Hall, laid out with much care and taste 

 by the late Mr. Cresswell, whose form I well remember standing 

 at his study window on the occasion of the last visit of the Club 

 to the same spot. The Pele Tower was viewed with much 

 interest. To the north of the tower was formerly I believe the 

 old dwelling house. The tower itself is still in a most perfect 

 condition. The walls are of rude but very strong masonry, the 

 courses are irregular but the quoins are carefully placed, and 

 so set that the weather might not injure it. I believe this 

 Pele Tower is interesting, as throwing some light on the interior 

 arrangement of the floors. I wrote to Mr. Bates, of Hetton, for 

 some information on this point, but, owing to his absence in 

 Eussia, I have not been able to obtain it. Mr. P. B. Wilson 

 states, in his "Churches of Lindisfarne," "that between the 

 modern mansion and the sea rises the ancient pele the Cresswells 

 reared in Edwardian times," and that "neither the ever-recur- 

 ring waves nor the sweeping eddying winds have been able to 

 efface, a tradition that lingers upon the shore here for perhaps a 

 thousand years. The fishers say that a beautiful maiden, a 

 daughter of the house of Cresswell, enamoured of a Dane, in the 

 hardy days when the sea kings carried all before them in love 

 and in war, saw her lover slain by two of her brothers, and that 

 she shut herself up, inconsolable, indomitable, and starved herself 

 to death." Cresswell was one of the manors of By well Barony, 

 and has been preserved by the family of its name since the reign 

 of King John. Prom the Pele Tower we passed through the 

 gardens and grounds to the House itself. The chief object of 

 note on the way being a plant of Traveller's Joy, or Clematis 

 vitalha, which had overrun a lofty tree, and was seen hanging 

 far over our heads. After seeing through the house, we passed 

 down the walk towards the sea, stopping to examine the skeleton 

 of a whale, which was the cause of a most expensive lawsuit, to 

 decide to whom it of right belonged. As we journeyed along 

 the sea banks we were introduced to a form of, as we might call 



