Fig. 281.—St. Helen’s Church. View looking East.
the foreground of [Fig. 281] gives an idea of the section of the jambs of the arch, only part of which now remains. A broad band connected with the caps runs along the north and south walls of the nave. The band is decorated with a circular rosette ornament. As will be seen from this view, the arch was flanked on each side by a square recessed opening, similar in position to those at the chancel arch at Tynninghame, but the recesses at the latter are arched. Beneath each of these there is a small opening, as shown on view, about 6 inches square, which goes into the wall for about two feet, but the place is now too ruinous to permit of the matter being further investigated.
The north wall of the chancel is almost entire, and has had no opening. The south wall is nearly all gone, and, as already stated, nothing remains of the east wall. The narrow east window, with its wide internal splay, appears to have been set in a recess, and enriched round the arch and down the jambs with a single chevron ornament.
Fig. 282.—St. Helen’s Church. West Gable Wall.
The west gable wall ([Fig. 282]) has been rebuilt in the fourteenth or fifteenth century. It is without opening of any kind, save the numerous putlog holes used for the masons’ scaffolding when erecting the building.
This was the church of Aldcamus, incorporated before the year 1750 in the parish of Cockburnspath. The manor of Aldcamus was granted by King Edgar (1098-1107) to Durham, and “thenceforth belonged to the monastery of Coldingham, as a cell of Durham.”[177] How long after this date the church was built we do not know; but as Chalmers remarks in a footnote that it was the manor, not the church, which Edgar granted to Durham, it may be doubted whether the church then existed. It appears to have fallen into ruin about the time of its annexation to Cockburnspath.
TYNNINGHAME CHURCH, Haddingtonshire.
The few relics which survive of this ancient monastery lie buried in a thick clump of trees, which stands between the modern mansion of Tynninghame and the river Tyne, about three miles north-east from East Linton. This was one of the churches dedicated to St. Baldred, of which there were several on the East Coast. That Saint seems to have selected the Bass Rock as his place of abode, whence his fame spread through the adjoining regions. He is believed to have come from the establishment of the Columbans at Lindisfarne, whose diocese extended as far as the Frith of Forth. He died in 606. The foundation of Tynninghame was laid by St. Baldred, or Blathere,[178] and the church continued as a separate parish till 1760, when it was united to Whitekirk.