R&port of Meetings for 1 889. By Dr. J. H aidy . 44 1 



Hodgson's Hist, of Northumberland ; but there is not space for 

 them, or the history of the place at present. The date of the 

 earliest assemblages for Presbyterian worship at Branton cannot 

 be precisely ascertained. Open air services were held in various 

 localities in the vicinity. " It is said," the Eev. James Blythe, 

 the present minister writes me, "that the first church was at 

 Reaveley, situated about two miles N.W. of Branton ; afterwards 

 the congregation built a church in Branton and removed to it as 

 a more central and suitable place ; that edifice in after years was 

 taken down and the present church was built, and bears the 

 date of 1781." It has since been entirely renovated in the 

 interior. In the "Records of Sessions of Justices," at Michael- 

 mas Sessions, 8th October 1701, 13 William III., a meeting house 

 for Protestant Dissenters was licensed at the house of " John 

 Crispe of Peveley." This is the first written record of its existence. 



Among the older geologists the great accumulation of gravel 

 at the County Bridges used to be adduced as testifying to the 

 wonderful disintegrating power of the present streams continued 

 from age to age. Nowadays this vast mass of rolled debris will 

 be attributed to the rivers and torrents of the glacial period, 

 which the present floods merely re-distribute or shift about. 



Entering Ingram haughs by the riverside, they were sprinkled 

 with waving golden broom and stiff furze bushes all in bright 

 blossom. Black-headed Gulls and Swallows were hawking along 

 the stream. The fords are dangerous, shifty, full of slippery 

 rolled stones, low on the one margin and high on the opposite. 

 There might be four of these treacherous crossings on the way 

 upwards. The stream is very tortuous, and seldom pauses in its 

 determined onward flow. The grass on the lower part of the 

 gravelly haughs is benty and rough, with much Nardil? stricta ; 

 Anthoxanthum odoratum was also prominent in bloom, and 

 unbitten by stock, which it seldom is. 



The grassy slopes on the Fawdon side have several raised 

 banks sweeping horizontally round them, more like water-formed 

 lines than those of culture. There are some torrent gaps in 

 them ; and in a bog at the base is an assemblage of alder bushes. 

 Caltha palustris in golden masses grows in the plashes, and 

 Ranunculus aquatilis with its white bloom, specks the detached 

 pools of stagnant water by the wayside. A high hillock below 

 the gap where Eeaveley looks out from a hollow is most remark- 

 ably streaked with old balks and terraces, partly upright and 



