56 Report of Meetings for 1885. By Jas. Hardy. 



reconsecrate, or reconcile ' ad reconciliandum the church and churchyard 

 of Simondeborne, which had been defiled by the burial of an excommuni- 

 cated person named George Marshall.' From the Saxon remains found at 

 the last restoration, one may conjecture that one building at least before 

 the present has occupied the site of the wattled chapel of Kentigern. The 

 present church, I conceive, was built dui'ing the early part of the thirteenth 

 century, when there was a spirit of great activity in church building in 

 Northumberland, before Edward the First's desolating wars. 



" Long chancels were in several cases added to Early English fabrics so 

 as to make them available for processions. Among the Northumbrian 

 churches of which the form of the nave and chancel is similar to that of 

 Simonburn may be mentioned Haltwhistle, Holy Island, Bamburgh, Mit- 

 ford, Rothbury, Hartburn, and Bothal. A peculiarity of this church is the 

 gradual descent from west to east. Tradition says that at one time there 

 were steps from the nave down into the church, and the aperture for the 

 hinge of the chancel gate is still there. I may say that the chancel arch 

 was heightened at the last restoration ; in carrying out this the stone work 

 above it fell in, and among the stones thus released were found the 

 remarkable fragments of a Saxon cross and the other ancient carved stones 

 which are preserved in the porch. This shows that the masonry must 

 have been of a late date. It has been suggested that the chancel was the 

 property of nuns of Nunwick, which accounted for its being separated by 

 gates from the nave ; but although a site is boldly marked out on the Ord- 

 nance Survey for the nunnery, I have met with no record of any monastic 

 establishment. The etymolog}' which made a saint of Seimund of the Red 

 Hand is probably again at fault. I Would also call attention to the traces 

 of a chantry in the S.E. aisle, the corbels, the curious aumbreys in the 

 vestry, the two piscinas disclosed by the restoration of 1864, the priest's 

 door and the low side window, one of the finest in the county. Since 

 placing the brasses with the list of rectors in the west end of the church, 

 beginning 1307, I have met with an account of the presentation, in 1225, of 

 Mr Matthew, Archdeacon of Cleveland, on the presentation of Alexander, 

 King of Scotland, who in a charter dated 1230, reserved for himself the 

 patronage of Simondeburn, when he gave Tynedale as her dowry to his 

 youngest sister Margaret. The advowson was afterwards claimed by 

 Edward III., King of England, and by Richard, Bishop of Durham; the 

 King, however, released his claim in 1338 to the Bishop, who issues a 

 letter of attorney to Wm. de Assheton to receive seizen thereof, as part of 

 an endowment to found a house of thirteen regular monks of the Black 

 Order of St Benedict at Oxford, in token of thankfulness for victory over 

 the Scots at Halidon Hill. This scheme seems to have fallen through, for 

 in 1360, Bishop Hatfield gives it to St George's College, Windsor, saving 

 a pension for a vicar to perform sacred services, ' dictse ecclesiaa et capellis 

 annexis.' It was surrendered in 1481, by order of Edward, to Richard 

 Duke of Gloucester, and his wife, Ann Nevill, probably to form part of the 

 endowment of a religious foundation ; but in the confusion following his 

 death at Bosworth, seems to have again become a rectory in the King's 



