REPORTS OF MEETINGS FOR 1911 241 



to assemble at Ayton, with the view of affording a convenient 

 opportunity of visiting the Church and Castle. A space of an 



hour and a half intervening between the arrival of 

 Ayton the trains was occupied by some in partaking 



Church. of the Secretary's hospitality, and by others in 



viewing the Manse garden, which was stocked 

 with a variety of interesting herbaceous and rock plants, many 

 of which were in fine bloom. Particular notice was taken of 

 a well established clump of the Martagon Lily (Lilium 

 Martagon albiim), comprising seven flowering spikes, three 

 of which- were normal, and four monstrous, supplying an 

 example of excessive fasciation. At 10-45 the party assembled 

 at the Church Lodge, occupied by the toll-keeper till the 

 abolition of the county tolls in 1883, and were conducted over 

 the Parish Church, a modern Gothic structure, erected in 

 1865, and in large measure gifted through the munificence of 

 Alexander Mitchell Innes, Esquire of Ayton and Whitehall, who 

 died in 1886, and was buried in the adjoining churchyard. It is 

 cruciform in shape and consists of a nave, apse and South 

 transept, being finished with a graceful spire, reaching a 

 height of over 120 feet. A number of handsome Elms (Ulmus 

 mo7itana) adorn the park in which it stands. A little farther 

 East are the ruins of the former Church purposely dismantled 

 and now picturesquely overgrown with, ivy, which occupies 

 the site of a still older building whose South transept, containing 

 a rough traceried window, forms the burying-place of the family 

 of Fordyce of Ayton. With reference to the antiquity of the 

 place it may be mentioned that in two charters, granted 

 between 1098 and 1107 for the foundation and endowment of 

 the Priory of Coldingham, the name occurs, though variously 

 spelled Eiton and Ayton. The precise date of the erection 

 of a place of worship, which at first was no more than a cell or 

 chapel attached to Coldingham and dedicated to St. Dionysius,i 

 is unknown. The parish had no separate existence till after 

 the Reformation. In an ancient building, however, John of 

 Gaunt, in 1380, met the Scottish commissioners appointed 

 by King Robert II. to arrange for a prolongation of the 



1 Chartulary of Coldingham, No. 225. Appendix to Raine's North 

 Durham. 



