108 Anniversary Address. 



the width of five feet. A stone staircase, in the thickness of 

 the wall, led to an upper story, which is now in a ruinous 

 condition. Stone corbels, with rudely carved heads on the 

 ends, project from near the top of the wall on the west side ; 

 similar corbels may also have been on the other walls, of 

 which the upper part is now broken, and they would be used 

 to support wood erections, from which to annoy an enemy 

 attacking the place. The district around was studded over 

 with such fortified towers. I remember one nearly perfect at 

 the Lee, near Rothbury. It had, on the ground floor, a 

 vaulted chamber, of which the walls were six to eight feet in 

 thickness, into which the cattle might be driven, when there 

 was a fear of an invasion from the Border raiders. From 

 this chamber a spiral stone staircase, within the thickness of 

 the wall, led to an upper chamber, where the family lived. 

 Above the doorway, from the roof, projected a stone shield, 

 about six feet high and three feet broad, sufficient to cover a 

 person standing behind it, and at his feet, between the shield 

 and the wall was an aperture, through which he might hurl 

 down stones and other missiles on the heads of the assailants, 

 and immediately above the door was another aperture com- 

 municating with the upper chamber, through which the in- 

 habitants might pour down molten lead or other destructive 

 liquid material. After the union of the crowns of England 

 and Scotland, these pele towers were abandoned for more 

 convenient dwellings. The Kyloe pele was inhabited till 

 1633, after which the Greys dwelt in a mansion house near 

 to the church. 



Kyloe crags are pillared basalt, reaching a height of five 

 hundred feet above the sea level, and they form the northern 

 termination of the Great Basaltic Whin Sill, which ranges 

 through the county; but perhaps the basaltic crags at Hume 

 castle, in Berwickshire, twenty miles to the westward, may 

 belong to the same eruption, as the rock is similar in mineral 

 and structural character. The basalt overlies a thick sandstone, 

 which boldly crops out of the west end of the crags, and is 

 called the Collier Heugh Crag. Coal seams are in the 



