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



Tea and other refreshments had been thoughtfully provided 

 for the visitors by Mr and Mrs Taylor, who were absent from 

 home ; after partaking of which the olden portion of the castle 



was ransacked — 



" Within each secret nook is shown — 

 Each vaulted chamber open thrown ;" 

 and the battlements being gained by the turret-stair, Mr 

 Hodges pointed out whatever was worthy of observation in the 

 higher part of the structure, his audience being seated on the 

 roof. 



Sir George Heron of Chipchase, then keeper of Tynedale and 

 High Sheriff of Northumberland, 13 Queen Elizabeth, was slain 

 in the Border fight of the "Raid of Reidswire," in July, 1575, 

 already alluded to in the Reports. The ballad calls him " Sir 

 George Hearoune of Schipsydehouse ; " and contrasts him with 

 the fiery Sir John Forster, as "gentle, meek and douse." 

 When the prisoners were conducted to Dalkeith, to Regent Mor- 

 ton, he tried to appease their wrath by presenting them with 

 falcons, for which Scotland was famous, on which one of his train 

 observed that "the English were nobly treated, since they got 

 live Haivlcs for their dead Herons. 



The possessors of the manor and castle in its successive trans- 

 formations were the Umframvilles, the de Insulas or Lisles, and 

 the Herons from intermarriage of Walter Heron with the heiress 

 of Sir John Lisle. It subsequently went by purchase to Mr 

 Robert Allgood in 17th century, Mr John Reed (1732), to the 

 guardians of Mr R. W. Gray of Backworth in 1825, and then in 

 1861 to Mr Hugh Taylor of Backworth, the present owner. 



The Rev. C. H. Hartshorne (Feudal and Military Antiquities, 

 pp. 77-79) presents us within a short compass, the main facts 

 about Chipchase Castle. 



" The chief structures of this nature (castle and peels) lie in Tyndale ; 

 and as this district appertained to the kings of Scotland until the end of 

 the thirteenth century, it would be vain to look for any notice of their 

 earliest erections. Yet we need not lie under any doubtful conjectures 

 concerning the age of most of those remaining. Their architectiu-al 

 features disclose the age with sufficient approximation to certainty. None 

 of them were built before the very close of the reign of Edward I. 



" Tyndale was granted to the brother of Malcolm, King of Scotland, in 

 the time of Henry II. Previous to this it was undoubtedly included 

 amongst the crown manors, and farmed by the sheriff as part of the Corpus 

 Comitatus, as an allowance is made to him of ten pounds annually out of his 

 farm after its alienation. On the death of Malcolm it became united to the 



