168 The Pre- Reformation Churches of Berwickshire. 



Within, immediately to the east of the doorway, is a small 

 rectangular niche or recess in the S. wail, which has probably 

 been a receptacle for a holy water-stoup. A foot or two further to 

 the east is a similar, but somewhat larger recess, 14^ inches high, 

 15^ inchps wide, and 17 inches deep, the object of which is not 

 so apparent. In the same wall, close to its eastern end, there is 

 a niche (which may at one time have contained a piscina) 13 

 inches high, 14^ inches wide, and 12 inches deep, opposite 

 which, in the N. wall, is an aumbry, 21 inches high, by 14 

 inches wide. 



Th6 baptismal font, a very plain specimen, about 20 inches in 

 diameter, and broken in two pieces, is lying near the west end of 

 the church, among loose stones aad rubbish. Two sepulchral 

 slabs may also be noticed ; one having incised upon it a sword 

 and a star within a circle ; and the other, a Maltese cross enclos- 

 ed in a circle, and a pair of shears below. (Fig. 38 ) The 

 former is doing <\ntj as the rear lintel of the smaller window 

 already mentioned. An examination of the exterior of the 

 building shows that at some period, probably when the church 

 was repaired and fitted up as the parish church in 1647, a con- 

 siderable number of similar slabs, only the edges of which can 

 now be seen, have been built into the walls as ordinary building 

 material. 



The ruins of this interesting old church are now abandoned 

 to nettles and decay. It is plain that, in Scotland, we enjoy 

 absolute immunity from the superstition which invests with 

 greater sanctity the walls of churches than the living worshippers 

 within them. Rut there is surely no reason for our going to 

 the opposite extreme, and allowing the places where our fathers 

 worshipped, and where their ashes rest, to become so neglected 

 and polluted as to offend the very nostrils of the few archaeo- 

 logical or other pilgrims who now visit their empty and broken 

 shrines. 



A Chapel at Wedderlie, subordinate to Hume,* and another 

 at Spottiswoode, which was called Whitechapel, apparently 

 connected with Gordon,f no longer exist. The ruins of the 

 latter "were entirely swept away when the ground was cleared 

 for building the present offices at Spottiswoode, "| about the 



* Liber de Calchon, Nos. 299, 300, 455, 460. 

 t Liber de Calchou, No. 420. 

 X New Statistical Account, p. 71. 



