284 In Durham and near it. 



effect and picturesqueness. The ruins are now in many 

 places ivy-grown, but are everywhere touched as with 

 the finger of romance and tradition, interesting, as Mr. 

 W. S. Gibson says, " to the architect no less than to the 

 antiquary, and the more so, because there is not another 

 building of decorated work worthy of note in the county 

 of Durham. Indeed, there are few specimens of it as 

 added to buildings of an earlier period in this part of 

 Old Northumbria, owing perhaps to the incessant wars 

 between England and Scotland, in the age when the 

 decorated style prevailed in this country, and to the 

 active part which the ecclesiastical princes palatine of 

 Durham, and their obedientaries and vassals, monastical 

 as well as lay, were obliged to take in these desolating 

 contests. Unpeopled and desecrated for three centuries, 

 time has spread over the chief portions of these grey 

 walls a mantle of venerable and luxuriant ivy, whose 

 roots entwine about the foundations, and whose branches 

 have penetrated the interstices of the masonry, rearing 

 their perennial foliage where all beside is crumbling to 

 ruin." 



Once well clear of the town, the road to Sunderland 

 Bridle is delightful, quietly picturesque, with the sweet 

 relief of strips of wood here and there on the right, 

 running along its borders, with fine specimens of birch 

 and beech and fir interlacing their branches. At the 

 time we last journeyed o'er it (April, 1893), tne larks 

 in the fields on the left were rising, circling upwards, 

 making the air vocal with their sweet and unceasing 

 song ; the lapwings circled round, their crests just 

 beginning to be brightened with tufts of deeper colour, 

 and uttering their familiar cry, pees-weet, pees-weet ; 

 and blackbirds and thrushes were very busy near to 

 the more wooded and cultured policies that led up to 



