U REPORT OF MEETINGS FOR 1906 



features of the building by Captain Norman, R.N., in a 

 paper which he read in church to a large assemblage. 



Quitting the precincts of the churchyard, which was a 

 pattern of ordei'liness, the party entered the grounds of the 

 Castle by the North lodge ; and following a short winding 

 carriage-drive, flanked on the left by a fern-clad dean, and 

 on the right by the American gardens with their handsome 

 Walnut trees, and evergreens shading from view old buildings 

 formerly connected with the Castle, they reached its North front, 



from which a beautiful avenue of overhanging 

 Chillingham Limes leads to the public road. As viewed from 

 Castle. the drive the Castle presents the appearance of a 



square, the corner towers of which are connected 

 by more modern buildings usually ascribed to the architec- 

 tural genius of Inigo Jones. The towers are undoubtedly of 

 greater antiquity. Bates in his Border' Holds of Northumberland 

 attributing the upper part of the South-East tower, the right 

 hand portion of the South-West tower, and the dungeon in 

 the North-West tower, to the middle of the 14th century, 

 while he claims for the North-East tower an even earlier 

 origin. At the inner corner of each there is a stair with 

 a square newel and landings ; and on a stone shield above 

 the main eutrance are engraved the arms of Gray of Heton, 

 Gray of Horton, and Fitzhugh. In the North- West tower 

 is situated the old baronial prison, on whose walls are 

 inscribed records of unhappy prisoners, and in which a 

 trap-door gives access, as in Alnwick and Dunstanburgh, 

 to a bottle-shaped dungeon, significantly termed an oubliette. 

 On the East side of the spacious courtyard inside the walls 

 of the Castle, a facade with a projecting stone stair leading 

 to the dining-room commanded attention, on either side of 

 which are arranged on brackets along the wall stone figures 

 of seven of the Nine Worthies. Under this stair stands 

 the famous toad-stone, an oblong slab of freestone, in which 

 a live toad is alleged to have been discovered immured in a 

 small cavity, the earliest notice of which is found in the 

 Athenian Oracle, Vol. III., published in 1704. In the 

 dining-room which is ornamented witii handsome heads of 

 the American Bison and Red Deer, several fine examples 

 of Laadseer's art are hung, including one on which the 



