Report of Meetings for 1 891. By Dr J . Hardy, 285 



William III., Sir William Blackett pulled down the old castle 

 of the Fenwicks, in the upper storeys, "leaving the ground 

 floor, around which earth was heaped, so that the lower storey 

 of the old castle became the cellars of the modern house ; and 

 very interesting and curious those cellars are. There is one 

 room 50 feet long by 20 broad, besides the basement of the 

 tower ; and there are considerable fragments of other rooms. 

 These are the strong rooms on the ground floor, into which the 

 horses and cattle used to be driven in times of danger. Then 

 Sir William Blackett built a perfectly square house, nearly 

 facing the four points of the compass, adopting what remained 

 of the old castle. There were no passages, each room opening 

 into the one adjoining, and there were four staircases, one for 

 each face, so that each room had two outer walls. The dining 

 room also had two outer walls, with windows looking into the 

 large square court. That was the original state of the compara- 

 tively modern house. Subsequently other changes were made, 

 by which the rooms were connected in the modern way, both 

 above and below, by passages. Those changes were followed 

 by another, made by the late Sir Walter Calverley Trevelyan. 

 He threw an iron and glass roof over the open court in the 

 middle of the building, and converted it into a beautiful central 

 hall, which binds the whole house together. It forms a place 

 of rendezvous, and a place for concerts or other entertainments. 

 It also keeps the house warm, which it certainly was not, when 

 there was an open court in the centre."* 



It is not my intention to describe the interior, where so much 

 of what was beautiful in painting and picture, and rare in art, 

 was shown and explained. An accurate account, and the latest 

 may be found in Mr Tomlinson's " Guide to Northumberland," 

 pp. 261-265. Intensely interesting were the memorials of Lord 

 Macaulay, " the bureau at which he wrote the whole of his 

 'History of England,' his inkstands, and several volumes of 

 the classical writers, annotated and marked by him " ; the bust 

 of the great historian, and the painting of his son-in-law. Sir 

 Charles Trevelyan, the distinguished Indian administrator. The 

 frescoes of Mr W. B. Scott, the medallions of famous Northum- 

 brians, and the illustrations of "Chevy Chase," are described 



* Sir Charles Trevelyan, in "Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries 

 of Newcastle-upon-Tyne," vol. i., (1883), p. 82. 

 IK 



