244 REPORTS OF MEETINGS FOR 1911 



said Earl Patrick, who died in 1232. In the reign of William 

 the Lion, Helias, Mauricius, and Adam de Eitun were witnesses 

 to a donation by David de Quixwood to the lazaret, or leper 

 hospital, at Auldcambus. In 1331, Adam, the prior of 

 Coldingham, acknowledged a grant of land made to him 

 for the site of a mill near the bridge of Ayton, by Adam, 

 son of William de Ayton, while Robert de Ayton was numbered 

 among the Scots slain at Nesbit-moor in the parish of Edrom, 

 22nd June, 1402.^ In the 15th century the lands of Ayton 

 became the possession of George de Home, son of Alexander 

 Home of Dunglass, in whose family they continued till 1716, 

 when sentence of forfeiture was passed upon Hon. James 

 Home of Ayton, who had rashly allied himself with the Earl 

 of Mar in his abortive rebellion. In consequence they were 

 vested in the Crown till purchased by John Fordyce Esquire, 

 one of the Commissioners on the forfeited estates, wlio, on the 

 destruction of the mansion-house by fire, disposed of them in 

 1839 to William Mitchell Innes Esquire of Parsons-green, in 

 whose family they remained till 1898. Thereafter they passed 

 into the possession of Henry H. Liddell Grainger Esquire, to 

 whose only son, Herbert, they now belong. 



After enjoying the generous hospitality of the lady of the 

 manor, and viewing with her kind permission the public 

 rooms of the Castle, replete with antique furniture and articles 

 of virtu, the members drove by the disused public road 

 through the Avenue Park, near which stood two ancient Peels, 

 whose names only are preserved in the local nomenclature of 

 the Wall Tower and Huldie's parks, to the main road from 

 Ayton to Coldingham, crossing the boundary between these 

 parishes by the bridge at Ale mill, and sighting the North Sea 

 and St. Abb's lighthouse from an elevated position about 

 half a mile Northward. An air of salubrity and productiveness 

 pervades the hollow selected by Edgar, king of Scots, in 1098, 

 to be the site of a Benedictine Priory, which he bestowed upon 

 the monks of St. Cuthbert, Durham, and endowed with 

 valuable gifts of land in the Merse^Berwick, Lennel, 

 Swinton, Edrom, Earlston, Ednam, and Stitchell being among its 



° History of Coldingham Priory, Carr, 1836, pp. 124-5. 



