218 THE CHURCH OF HUME 



to the neighbouring parish of Stichill. The now united parishes 

 were never merged in each other nor deprived of their ecclesias- 

 tical individuality ; they thus present features distinct from many 

 other united parishes. For instance, they are in separate though 

 contiguous counties, Stichill being in Roxburghshire, while 

 Hume is in Berwickshire. The popular rights of each parish are 

 safeguarded by their respective Parish Councils, while one 

 School Board charges itself with their mutual educational 

 interests, and one board of heritors supervises the temporalities 

 of the benefice. Each parish has its churchyard and glebe or 

 kirklands, but the parishioners worship together in the parish 

 church of Stichill. 



Hume Church was ruinous in 1637, and has been allowed to 

 disappear off the face of the earth. Little more than grass- 

 grown mounds mark the site of the walls of its nave and chancel. 

 Sufficient traces remain to indicate that the Pre-Eeformation 

 Church was long and narrow, and measured 26 yards from east 

 to west, and 7 yards from north to south. An existing building, 

 known to the villagers as the burial aisle of the Lords of Home 

 forms an annexe to the foundations of the north side, but 

 apparently was not part of the original church. It contains no 

 monuments, nor are there traditions of other than very recent 

 interments in it. An object of some interest and speculation 

 in the south-east corner of the churchyard is the Pest Knowe, 

 which is the traditional burial-place of the victims of the 

 plague. Excavation has shown that however this may be, the 

 elevation is formed by the debris of the church. 



There probably were earlier ecclesiastical structures upon or 

 very near the same site. For Ninian and Kentigern, and their 

 disciple-missionaries are believed to have evangelised Eoxburgh- 

 shire and Berwickshire, and one of the most interesting features 

 of the wonderful continuity of the church in Scotland has been 

 the permanence of church-sites down through the centuries ; 

 first the baptismal well, glorified later as a fount of physical 

 healing, the grove or the wayside cross marking the station 

 of the itinerant missioner ; then the eremitical cell or the tiny 

 chapel ; succeeded after the institution of parishes, by the wood 

 or wattled and thatched church, or the lordly stone cathedral 

 or abbey. In the case of the church of Hume, its earlier 

 types have perished, but two supposed memorials of its Celtic 



