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



hours after sunrise much low cloud portended immediate rain. 

 These conditions, no doubt, tended to lessen the number at the 

 breakfast table, set in Mr Russell's hotel at nine o'clock ; but 

 sixteen gentlemen, iu good spirits and under that genial feeling 

 which club association generates, assembled at the breakfast 

 table. 



The Eev. Mr Workman kindly accepted the duty of cicerone 

 for the day, and the party, after breakfast, proceeded to view 

 the local ruins— survivals of a time when ecclesiastics were lords 

 temporal as well as spiritual of the adjacent territory. The ruins 

 of the but recently abandoned Parish Church were first inspected. 

 Its architecture is of various types and several periods, a patch- 

 work of successive generations, the foundation at one angle so 

 archaic as to suggest fabricators who had never heard of any style ; 

 on the whole, a church designed for use and not for admiration, 

 yet in some of its parts good solid work, with traces of the 

 Norman, though of the plainest. The most notable fact the pile 

 presents is the apparent absence of a chancel in the oldest, and 

 certainly pre-reformation portion of it. It is recorded in the 

 session memoranda, that in 1627 an assessment was imposed for 

 the erection of a bell-house on the church, and there can be little 

 doubt that this was the belfry now forming the apex of the ruins. 

 The assessment also provided a new roof of thatch and other 

 repairs on the building. "The Primitive Church of Wedale," 

 writes Mr Craig-Brown, "treasured what was believed to be a 

 fragment of the true cross, brought by King Arthur from the 

 Holy Land, and its peculiar sanctity on this account was enhanced 

 by the privilege of refuge which it possessed in the time of King 

 Malcolm the Maiden, or before it." Of this church the ruin is, 

 no doubt, successor by unbroken descent, and part of its walls 

 are old enough to point to a time when the priesthood had not 

 ceased to believe in true fragments of the cross. 



An adjacent ruin, traditionally designated "the Bishop's 

 House," was the next object of critical inspection. It is through- 

 out built of the grey Silurian grits of the neighbourhood, without 

 trace of ornamentation, is of small dimensions, having had many 

 small rooms with low ceilings, and is suggestive of anything rather 

 than of a mediaeval Archbishop's palace. It has not a single 

 characteristic of the Border peel, excepting the material of which 

 it is built, is evidently of considerable age, and is supposed to 

 have been the residence which <mve the name " Stow " (choice 



