[Original]
A cheerful little village is the Otterburne of the present day,—even though there are not wanting evidences that some part of it, down by the inn, for example,-has planted itself in too close proximity to a river and a burn which still, as in those early eighteenth century days of "Mad" Jack Hall, are capable of sudden and vindictive flood. As regards the battlefield, however, there is not a great deal to see. The so-called Percy's Cross, which stands in a thin clump of trees to the east of the road three-quarters of a mile on the Scottish side of the village, is a comparatively modern erection. The true site ot the original "Battle Stone," according to maps of date 1769, was about a couple of hundred yards more to the east, and there it stood, or rather, lay, till 1777, when the then proprietor of the land, a Mr. Ellison, put up the cross now standing, within view of the new turnpike road which was then being made up the valley of the Rede. Mr. Ellison used the ancient socket of the original cross, but the rough pedestal on which the socket stands has nothing to do with the old memorial.
[Original]
Nor has the present shaft, which, says Mr. Robert White in his "History of the Battle of Otterburne" (1857), was nothing but "an old architrave which had been removed from the kitchen fireplace at Otterburne Hall. This stone, the cross-section of which is fifteen and a half by eight inches, still shows a bevelled corner throughout its length; besides, two small pieces of iron project from one of its sides, which, in its former period of usefulness, were probably connected with some culinary apparatus. On its top is another stone, tapering to a point, which completes the erection. The entire length of the shaft above the base is nine and a half feet. The socket is a worn, weather-beaten sandstone, about two feet square, without any tool-marks upon it, and appears to have been in use much longer than any of the stones connected with it."
A still more modern memorial of the battle is a large semicircular seat cut in freestone, bearing on darker coloured panels various inscriptions, which stands by the road-side a little farther to the north. This was erected in 1888 by Mr. W. H. James, then M.P. for Gateshead. It may be noted that one of the panels gives the date of the battle as tenth August, 1388, which is almost certainly a mistake.
Douglas, of course, had satisfactory reasons for camping that night where he did,—reasons not unconnected probably with the question of shelter from English arrows. A wood protected him, it is said. Had he gone four or five miles farther on up the valley, he might have occupied the old Roman camp of Bremenium, a strong position, not sheltered from arrow-flight by trees, it is true, but protected on two sides by what in old days must have been swamps, and surrounded by a heavy wall which, even in its present condition, would be, to a defending force, a considerable protection in hand to hand fighting. Five hundred years ago, before the day of agricultural improvement and the custom of using ancient monuments as a quarry, such a defence must have made the camp a place of very considerable strength. Portions only now remain of the formidable wall which originally protected Bremenium, but enough stands to show what its strength must have been in the days when the Roman Legions manned it. The face is composed of great blocks of hewn freestone, accurately fitted; in height it must have been about fourteen feet, in thickness something like seventeen,—the inner portion, of course, being rubble work; outside there were two or more fosses. One of the gateways is still intact to a very considerable height, but the camp as a whole has to a most pitiable extent been used as a quarry, perhaps for hundreds of years. Even yet, one doubts if it is held quite sacred from vandal raids. As late as 1881, when members of the Berwickshire Naturalists' Club visited the camp they found masons deliberately quarrying stones from one corner of the wall, in order to build a hideous modern cottage, and I daresay some of the houses in the immediate neighbourhood may be composed entirely of stones taken from the old walls. The writer has not seen the Roman tombs which exist about half a mile to the east of the camp. The largest of these is said to have still two courses of stones standing, besides the flat stones of the foundation. This tomb has in front a small carving, regarding which Dr. Collingwood Bruce, in "The Roman Wall," suggests that it may have been intended to represent "the head of a boar—the emblem of the twentieth legion." The writer is given to understand that the carving bears no resemblance whatever to the head of a boar. A coin of the Emperor Alexander Severus was found in this tomb, together with a jar containing calcined bones, and a coin of the Emperor Trajan was found in the camp.