Report of Meetings for 1887. By J. Hardy. 33 



Eimsidehill " Braidy," and the peaked hill, " Sharpy." By the 

 road we travelled, we dived down between rose-decorated fences to 

 Swaidand burn ; having an uninterrupted view seawards, as far 

 as Cresswell, and winding round to Hauxley and Coquet Island, 

 with a richly clothed intervening space of cultivated lands. 

 Passing Fence Houses or Swarland Fence, we crossed the burn, 

 with alders and oaks and planted trees on its banks and margin, 

 and reached Swarland village, when we went across to see the 

 old mansion of the Hazelriggs, now converted into the farm 

 house. The door and window sides have curiously twisted pillars, 

 and architraves. It is built of large smoothed blocks of sand- 

 stone ; and is covered with large sandstone slates, which were 

 quarried on Eimside Moor. It is not so old as was expected. 

 There is an effaced inscription above the door in which 17. . . . 

 is still perceptible. A drawing of this should be obtained. Mr 

 Gr. H. Thompson writes that there was a wood-cut of it published 

 by Mr Davison of Alnwick. Possibly the old family occupied 

 the peel tower till a later period. The inscription was possibly 

 a scripture text, for the family were latterly Presbyterians of 

 the strictest sort, and for a time were forfeited for their adhesion 

 to the Commonwealth; and were restored by James II., when he 

 adopted conciliatory expedients to secure the adhesion of the 

 Puritans to his measures. 



Some progress has been made in ascertaining the old pro- 

 prietors of Swarland from the age of the Bertrams of Mitford, 

 the earliest overlords, down to the present time. This will lie 

 kept in view. In the garden were gooseberry bushes, some 

 apple trees, and blossoming roses. A fine crop of yellow stone 

 crop had attached itself to the garden wall. 



We now turned north, and entered the policies of Swarland 

 Hall, (Mr Andrews), passed at a little distance the good-looking, 

 although plain, new-house, and fine park, the recent cottages 

 and their trim flower gardens, and the freshly built offices, and 

 then turned west again, alongside a plantation of tall firs, that 

 had been decimated by the gales of recent years : — -and where the 

 undergrowth was heather. Here we were immediately behind 

 Newton Hall grounds ; further on on our left the strong Chester- 

 hill British camp was very obvious on a green height, but there 

 was no time to scale it, and we came out on a point, were we saw 

 up by Shield-dykes (the old Swinleys and Swinlescheles), and 

 looked across to the moory and grassy ground beyond "the 

 y 



