Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/172

 . 3, 1861.] WHEN DATH COMES THAT NONC

THE BODE KEPT THE SOUL IN PAEN

THROVGH CHRIST A JOYFVL RESVRECTION

AL FRENDES MAY BE GLAD TO HAER

WHEN HES SOVL FROM PAEN DID GO

OVT OF THES WORLD AS DOETH APPEAR

IN TH YEAR OF OVR LORD

A 1562

XX

The church consists of a nave, two side aisles, and a chancel of a lofty pitch, and possesses a curious font. Towards the east end of the town, on the south side, there is an extensive and strong earthwork, of an oval form, called Castle Bank. On the east end it is scarped in four terraces; the crown of the hill is protected by a breastwork of earth facing the town, the other slope towards the river being naturally steep and inaccessible. Near the river are the traces of a Roman military station, called Whitchester. We now sauntered over the bridge, which here crosses the Tyne, to Bellister Castle, a short distance from Haltwhistle. This picturesque ruin belonged to a younger branch of the Blenkinsop family. It stands upon an artificial mount, and is overshadowed by a sycamore of extraordinary growth. Surrounding the mount is a broad fosse. From Bellister we bent our steps by a walk chiefly through the fine grounds of Unthank to Willimoteswick, a capital example of a border stronghold, and formerly a residence of the family of Ridley, from which sprang the Oxford martyr, and which family is now represented by Sir Matthew White Ridley of Blagdon. This family had also a residence at the Walltown, as appears in the afore-mentioned epitaph in Haltwhistle church, and another at Hardriding, on the opposite bank of the river:—

Hardriding Dick,

And Willimoteswick,

And Jack o’ the Wa’,

And I cannot tell a’.

Are they not set forth in the ballad which Surtees wickedly palmed upon Scott as a thing of veritable antiquity, in the faith of which he printed it? Leaving Willimoteswick, we crossed the Tyne, by stepping-stones, to Bardon Mill, and returned to Haltwhistle, passing through Melkridge, where there is a peel-tower, which formerly belonged to the Blackett family.

Next morning H and I, together with W, with whom we had smoked the pipe of confabulation the night previous, bent our way up the long steep hill to Haltwhistle Moor, and passing two ancient monumental stones, called by the moorsmen the “Mare and Foal,” we rested awhile for the refreshment of a glass of ale and some barley cake at the roadside public-house, of the sign of “Twice-Brewed Ale,” well known to pilgrims of the Wall, and thence proceeded to the Little Cheaters, the Roman Vindolana, a camp nearly two miles to the south of the wall, which was garrisoned by the Cohors Quarta Gallorum. In approaching this camp we observed a Roman milestone, upwards of six feet in height and about two feet in circumference, standing in its original position. On its western face there has been an inscription, now illegible. Another milestone stood to the west of this, ubtbut [sic] it was split by an ignorant proprietor for gate-posts. Horsley gives the inscription—BONO REIPVBLICÆ NATO; To one born for the good of the Republic. The space between these two stones was measured, and found to be 1698 yards, which is assumed to be the exact length of the Roman mile.

In the house and grounds at the Little Chesters, sometimes called the Bowers, or Chester in the Wood, a choice collection of Roman antiquities, found in the neighbourhood, are preserved. A very fine altar to Jupiter bears testimony that the camp here was the Roman Vindolana, having, according to the inscription it bears, been erected by Pituanius Secundus, præfect of the fourth cohort of the Gauls, which appears to have been stationed at Vindolana. The name Vindolana is surmised to have been derived from vin, in Celtic, a height, and lann, in the Gaelic, weapons, giving the Ossianic name of Hill of Arms. The camp, or station, is greatly dilapidated. A portion of the wall near the north-east corner of the station was found at a height of twelve courses of masonry. The vestiges of two buildings, both having hypocausts, have been discerned. Near the milestone afore-mentioned is a large tumulus, the burial-place, it may be, where the once mighty and renowned have long slept the sleep of dust and oblivion—

A road, still in use, leads from the station of Borcovicus to Little Chesters. This is laid down in Horsley’s plan as a military way between the stations. In the valley below Housesteads is a small eminence called Chapel Hill, so called from a temple having stood on its side. Two fine altars found here are in the Museum of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle. Some fragments of large columns remain on the ground, and appear to have been parts of a building of considerable magnitude. A cave, dedicated to the Mithraic worship, was discovered at Chapel Hill. It is now entirely destroyed, but is thus described by the Rev. John Hodgson: “It faced the four cardinal points, and its area, which had been dug out of the side of the hill, opposite the west end of the Chapel Hill, measured 12 feet 8 inches from north to south, by 10 feet from east to west, besides having a recess in the middle of the west wall, 30 inches deep and 7 feet long. The east wall had a doorway through it, and, to the level of the floor, inside and out, was faced with hewn stone; but the other three sides, especially the west, were faced on the inside only, their outsides having been built up against an excavation of from four to five feet deep. The floor was paved with thick sandstone slates, of irregular sizes and shapes. A spring was an essential requisite to a Mithraic cave, and the waters that rose in this were drained off from its doorway by an adjoining lake in 1809, when extensive foundations of apartments, that had communicated internally with the cave, were ransacked for stones for a field wall on the western side of this estate. Some fragments of vessels of