94 The Pre- lief ormation Churches of Berwickshire. 



to Coldingham, and was dedicated to St. Dionysius,*' is not 

 known ; but from references made to it in the chartulary of the 

 priory and elsewhere, it is clear that it must have been built 

 before the close of the 12th century. Ay ton had no separate 

 parochial existence until after the Reformation. In the ancient 

 church, John of Gaunt, in 1380, met the Scottish commissioners 

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

 the truce between the two kingdoms ; and a similar conference 

 was held within its walls four years later. The truce of 1497 

 also was signed in Ayton church. That it was so frequently 

 selected as a meeting-place for such purposes was, no doubt, 

 due to its proximity to the English border, and not to anything 

 unusual in the magnitude or pretensions of the structure itself ; the 

 probability, which an examination of the ruins serves to confirm, 

 being that, like most other country churches of early date, it 

 was merely a plain oblong, with perhaps some lateral chapels 

 added subsequently. Mr Carr, indeed, {History of Coldmgham, 

 p. 131) speaks of it as having been built in the form of a St. 

 John's Cross, and refers to the window of the S. transept as 

 affording "a fine specimen of the intermixture between the 

 Saxon and Norman styles of architecture introduced into Scot- 

 land in the 12th century." But if the adjunct which he calls 

 the S. transept has not been a late addition to the church, the 

 window has been a late insertion in the transept. It is round- 

 headed, no doubt, but is of much larger dimensions than the 

 ordinary type of Norman window, and is divided into three lights 

 by mullions crossed by a transom bar. The tracery, of which 

 some idea may be formed from the illustration given in Mr Carr's 

 work,is still entire,and is of the most ungainly description,looking 

 more like the debased work of the 17th or 18th century than 

 that of any of the mediaeval styles. Of course the fact of its 

 being bar tracery conclusively shows that it is long posterior to 

 the Norman period; and it is impossible to avoid the suspicion 

 that it may have been one of the "improvements" referred to 

 in the Old Statistical Account as having been made upon the 

 church not many years before it was written. The E. wall of 

 the chancel was nearly entire when Mr Carr wrote, but has since 

 been removed, so that the dimensions of that portion of the 



* Chartulary of Coldinghaui, No. 225. Appeudix to Uaine's North 

 D urham. 



