460 Report of Meetings for 1881. By Jas. Hardy. 



We have heard of the visit of the Monks of Lindisfarne to Elsdon, A.D. 

 875, with the bones of St. Cuthbert, and this event forms a very important 

 epoch in the history of the town. Let us turn our attention to this period, 

 and for a moment take a retrospective glance at the changes which have taken 

 place. Let us picture to ourselves the village and locality as they were in the 

 ninth century, and see how much of the Elsdon of the present day belongs to 

 the time when it had the honor of being the resting place of the great north- 

 ern saint. The camps occupied the summits of the neighbouring hills, and the 

 huge cairns on Peden and Darden Pikes covered the bodies of brave warriors, 

 that for ages had reposed beneath their kindly protection. The Mote Hills 

 no doubt raised the wonder of the wandering monks, for the date of their 

 construction and the purposes for which they were intended were probably 

 then as great a mystery, as they are at the present moment. The tablet dedi- 

 cated to Matunus for the safety of Antoninus Csesar, born for the good of the 

 human race, had become imbedded here ; but the touching memorial which 

 Julia Lucilla had left to the memory of her meritorious husband might then 

 have been found near the moss covered ruins of the deserted Bremenium, or 

 hid underneath the debris of that ancient city. 



The church of those days (if the village enjoyed the blessing of a church) 

 would be a very unpretending structure. Its walls might have been of mud, 

 or like Grinstead (where the bones of St. Edmond are said to have rested) of 

 rifted oak, and its roof of rushes in imitation of the reeds with which Lindis- 

 farne was covered two centuries before. Certain it is that not a fragment of 

 the present church was then in existence ; even its predecessor, the building of 

 which the two west end columns are the only remaining vestiges, had not yet 

 been erected ; and if the stones composing the durable Border Tower which 

 overlooks the village had still to rest undisturbed for centuries in the Flatt 

 Dene, it were vain to look for remains of such frail habitations as afforded a 

 precarious shelter to the fugitive Monks and their hospitable entertainers 



Though the works of man have in a great measure passed away, little 

 change has taken place in the natural features of the country, which even 

 now presents the same general outline of hill and dale as it then did ; only in 

 the earlier period the valleys were luxurantly covered with natural wood, and 

 the sweet though feeble niusic of the lark would be drowned by the more 

 powerful chorus issuing from the grove. 



The geological epoch when Elsdon burn probably swept round the north 

 west side of the Castle was long past, and the brook was quietly flowing in 

 its present channel. No essential change in its course has taken place during 

 the ten centuries which have elapsed since the important visit of which we have 

 been speaking, and opposite the Mote Hills its channel has not been deepened 

 more than four feet whilst thirty generations have sported on its banks. 



Well may its murmurs, in the beautiful language of Tennyson be supposed 

 to say — 



' And onward thus I ceaseless flow. 



To join the brimming river ; 

 For men may come and men may go, 

 But I go on for ever.'" 



The company next adjourned to the mediaeval peel, now the 

 rectory-house, which was kindly thrown open for the occasion by 



