248 Report of Meetings. By James Hardy. 



York. Also collections for the Society for Propagating Christian Know- 

 ledge 1721 — and for harbours at Eyemouth, St Andrews, and Banff." 



The churchyard is large but crowded to excess, and to relieve 

 it the old grave yard at Birgham, where there once was a chapel, 

 has again been opened. Eccles church is a heavy piece of 

 architecture, modelled on St Cuthbert's Chapel of Ease, Edin- 

 burgh. The minister, the Eev, Adam Murray, for whom it 

 was built in 1774, boasts of it as "the best and handsomest 

 country church in Berwickshire." It can accommodate 1000 

 people. Painted of a dark colour, the interior is gloomy and de- 

 pressing. The seats in the gallery are allotted among the heri- 

 tors, and marked with their initials ; those belonging to Eccles 

 House still carrying the S. J. P. of Sir John Paterson. The 

 church steeple is a local land-mark. There are numerous inter- 

 esting tombstones in the churchyard, from which I copied most 

 of the inscriptions. One of these, a through, is to the memory 

 of the progenitors of Dr Johnston, the earliest name inscribed on 

 the stone, being "William Johnston, Tenant of Ednam in 

 Ednam Mains, who died November 3d, 1699, aged 50 years." 

 The stone has recently been renovated. 



This was the first occasion of the Club having visited Eccles, 

 but to several of its founders it was endeared as a family home. 

 The three Bairds were born here, in a manse afterwards burnt 

 down, and subsequently rebuilt on the present ample scale; — John, 

 born 17th February, 1799, Andrew, born 16th November, 1800, 

 and William, born 1 1th January, 1803. Dr. E. D. Thomson, born 

 1811, another early and eminent member, was the son of the 

 Eev. Dr. James Thomson, minister here ; and he wrote for his 

 father the latest Statistical Account, besides contributing to our 

 knowledge of its Natural History in a variety of aspects. 



The two old vaults behind the mansion house are now, with a 

 portion of the eastern wall of the house, the only relics of the 

 buildings of the Cistercian Nunnery ; so thoroughly had they 

 been wrecked in the Border raid of Sir Bryan Laton, 27th Sep- 

 tember, 1544. An excavated sandstone, like a spout or drain, 

 with a corresponding arched stone above it, used in an outhouse, 

 appears to have been part of the piscina of the original church 

 The font, still in good preservation, is placed in the garden ; — a 

 bowl of fine-grained sandstone, perforated at the bottom and 

 smoothed on the outside ; 2 feet 8 inches in diameter. An ash 

 tree, deriving its sustenance from the churchyard, has anchored 



