Report of Meetings for 1889. By Dr. J. Hardy. 477 



was formerly under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Jedburgh Abbey. 

 Readers of the "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border" will see that it is a 

 perversion to transplant the Cowt of Kielder's grave from Hermitage to 

 the neighbourhood of Bell's Kirk. The Deadwater and Bell's Burn form 

 the North Tyne. The head of North Tyne, in Armstrong's Map, 1769, is 

 placed among the hills, on a fork of the Deadwater. Modern surveyors, 

 however, place the source "a little further north than the Deadwater, 

 which they thus make its first tributary," pointing to its rise, "at a spot 

 within the enclosure of the North British Railway, near some old cutting 

 stone sheds connected with a quarry seen on the Fell side." (Palmer's 

 " Tyne and its Tributaries," p. 4). From the breadth of its channel, and 

 the mass of debris that it has brought down from the hills, it appeared to 

 me that Kielder Burn had once been the main stream, and even still, during 

 a flood, it must be the force of that wild stream that impels the sluggish 

 Deadwater to fulfil its functions. The course is indicated by the glaucous 

 green foliage and the numerous black heads of Oarex riparia on its margin, 

 along a grassy meadow. Then alders and birches gather round the infant 

 river, in clumps or single trees. Then a conspicuous new house for the 

 Duke of Northumberland's agent, rises above the closer clustering sallows, 

 and birches and alders, and mountain ashes and bird-cherries, on the 

 sloping left banks, and surrounded by moist mountain meadows. Thickets 

 of fir cover the approach to Kielder Castle, and envelop the native sylvan 

 investment of the stream. Carduus heterophyllus, and Geranium sylvaticum, 

 and Equisetnm sylvaticum are frequent by the road-side. The North Tyne 

 is crossed near a thicket of trees, and being at this season at its extreme 

 diminution, contained little water. Access had been obtained to the 

 grounds. The Castle occupies a green grassy knoll, and is now well 

 environed with trees of limited size ; for it is a modern shooting-seat of 

 moderate dimensions, built in a castellated style, it must have a fine 

 appearance from the upland moors which overhang it on the east. Woods 

 not only screen the castle, but plantations are massed at the base of the 

 dark heathery hills, and diversify the prospect. A settled quiet prevails. 

 Encircling the grassy space in front of the castle, is the Kielder with its 

 broad channel full of huge boulders. These as well as those in the Liddel 

 were of a dirty white, from the clayey character of the soil on their banks. 

 There was much Carduus heterophyllus, and Geranium sylvaticum in the 

 hay-crops. The Great White Ox-eye grew in the pastures. The birds 

 visible were Chaffinches and Starlings, and the Grey Flycatchers perched 

 on horizontal tree branches, were busy at their avocation of capturing 

 passing insects. There was nothing here to be seen in the form of 

 antiquities ; but Mackenzie (Northd., ti., p. 256) states that " some yards 

 to the north of the castle, -4 rings and 2 round pieces of bronze, clumsily 

 soldered together with a whitish metal, were discovered by the earth being- 

 washed from about them by the water of an open drain." A stemmed and 

 barbed flint arrow-head, resembling Dr. Evans' figure, 303, was found in 

 Kielder Burn. (Ancient Stone Implements, p. 346. Arch. Journal, xvn., 

 p. 60.) 

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