110 REPORT OF MEETINGS FOR 1901 



And of— 



Helen 



wife of John Spottiswootle 



daughter of Andrew Wauchope 



of Niddrie 



She died in the 87th year of her age 



The " old " church was stated to have been transplanted, 

 bit by bit, from an earlier site to its present position. 



Mr A. Thomson here read a paper outside the church door, 

 in the afternoon sunshine, the Club members grouped around 

 him in the long grass among the tombstones. Both roof and 

 walls of this ruinous church are covered with old ivy, whose 

 gnarled arms are bunched in masses round the cornices. 

 [Plate XX. — from a photograph by Miss M. Milne Home.] 



Westruther : — A Descriptive Note. 



This delightful rural parish, which is situated on the western 

 slopes of Lammermoor, lies nearly " four-square," the length 

 and breadth thereof are equal — say five miles. In 1755 it 

 contained 591 inhabitants; and in 1791 there were 730 souls. 

 Throughout the nineteenth century there was probably little 

 variation, and about the middle of it one quaintly enumerates 

 "three bachelors and four fatuous persons." Westruther and 

 Houndslow (30 miles from Edinburgh) are villages less 

 populous than one hundred years ago, when the latter had 

 70 inhabitants. The soil in the northern half of the parish, 

 which rises towards Twinlaw Cairns (1466 feet), is a whitish 

 cold clay ; while that of the southern, drained by the upper 

 reaches of the Blackadder and Eden, is composed of a reddish 

 earth on a freestone bottom. As the name Westruther 

 implies, the climate is moist and the ground in places marshy. 

 The earlier designation — Wolfstruther — points to a time when 

 hunting prevailed with lovers of the chase. Eaecleugh, 

 Hindsidehill, Hound-(Hunt-)slow, Harelaw, tell of a life wild 

 and free. Flass, even yet clad with wind-beat hazel and 

 birk, Broomiebank, Thornydykes, Houlet's Ha', gave welcome 



