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Allan appearance the place was uninhabitable. The cliff, of hard magnesian limestone, rose perpendicularly from the shore to a height of 100 feet, and the surface it presented to the sea was only broken by two caverns at its base, which the sea filled at high tide. Nevertheless, Allan's superhuman energy and industry transformed the rock into a large dwelling-house. Having hollowed a wide ledge on the face of the rock, and connected it with the land above, he built upon it a large timber hut, part of which formed a tavern entitled ‘The Grotto,’ and part a farmhouse. Within the adjoining rock, on the same level, Allan dug out fifteen large rooms in succession, most of which were lighted by windows hewn in the cliff overlooking the sea. The total length of the excavated chambers, each of which received a name, such as the ‘gaol room,’ the ‘devil's chamber,’ the ‘circular room,’ and so forth, was 120 feet, their greatest height 20 feet, and their greatest breadth 30 feet. On the waste ground above the excavations Allan planted rabbits for shooting, and the farmhouse and ledge he stocked with domestic animals.

During the twenty-one years that Allan lived with his family in the rock he paid rare visits to the neighbouring towns, and was on one occasion snowed up for six weeks together. He rescued several vessels in distress off the coast, and in 1844 he saved from drowning some lads who had wandered into the caves below his dwelling; an act which was commemorated by the vicar of Newcastle in a poem entitled ‘The Mercy at Marsden Rock.’ Allan was nevertheless regarded by his neighbours with many misgivings, and the excise officers, suspecting him to be a smuggler, frequently molested him. In 1848 the lord of the manor claimed rent from him as the owner of the surface ground, and on his denial of his liability served him with a process of ejectment. Allan refused to quit, and brought a suit against the landlord, by which his right of habitation was upheld, but each side was condemned to pay its own costs. Amid these anxieties Allan's health gave way, and he died 31 Aug. 1849, in his fifty-first year. He was buried in the presence of his parents, who had lived with him and who survived him, in Whitburn churchyard, and his tombstone bore the inscription, ‘The Lord is my rock and my salvation.’

His family continued to dwell for some years at Marsden after Allan's death. One of his sons inherited his passion for excavation, and his daughter, from the readiness with which she aided distressed ships, was compared to Grace Darling. The singular edifice was for many years ‘one of the principal curiosities of the north of England,’ and many descriptions of it have been published by local writers. It endured till February 1865, when it was destroyed by a fall of the cliff ( Guide to Northumberland and Durham, p. 136).

[Notes and Queries (1st series), viii. 539, 630, 647; Gent. Mag. (new series), xxxii. 440; Latimer's Local Records of Northumberland and Durham, p. 265; Marsden Rock, or the Story of Peter Allan and the Marsden Marine Grotto, reprinted from the ‘Sunderland and Durham County Herald’ (1848); Shirley Hibberd, in the People's Illustrated Joumal.]  ALLAN, PETER JOHN (1825–1848), poet, was born at York on 6 June 1825. His father was Dr. Colin Allan, at one time chief medical officer of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Allan's short life was mainly spent in that town and at Fredericton, New Brunswick, whither his family removed on Dr. Allan's retirement from professional life in 1836. For a time Allan studied law, but the success attending the publication of some youthful poems in a weekly journal induced him to devote himself exclusively to literature, and he rapidly prepared a volume of poems, which was sent in manuscript to England for publication. But before the book was printed, Allan was seized with fever, and died, after a brief illness, at the age of 23.

More than four years after Allan's death there was published in London the ‘Poetical Remains of Peter John Allan, Esq., with a short biographical notice, edited by the Rev. Henry Christmas, M.A., F.R.S.,’ 1853. The memoir, which is unaffectedly pathetic, is by the poet's brother, J. McGrigor Allan. The poems show much metrical skill, and the lyrics interspersed in a fragment of a drama, entitled ‘Pygmalion,’ are very melodious. But Allan evidently wrote largely under Byron's influence, and there is throughout the volume an absence of any striking originality. The majority of the poems are evidently very youthful compositions, and fail to justify the extravagant expectations expressed by Allan's friendly critics of his future achievements.

[Poetical Remains of P. J. Allan, edited by the Rev. Henry Christmas, 1853.]  ALLAN, ROBERT (1774–1841), Scotch poet, was born on 4 Nov. 1774, at Kilbarchan, Renfrewshire, where his father was a flax-dresser, and where he himself became a muslin-weaver. Early in life he began to write songs, chiefly in the Scottish dialect, often composing them at the loom, and he 