The Barrier next crosses a small hill called the Pike. The Vallum is a little below the summit of the eminence, on its southern side; if this fortification had been formed irrespective of the Wall, it would doubtless have been drawn along the top of the height. The same remark applies to Hare-hill.
The view from the Pike, of the flat and fertile vale below is truly magnificent.
THE WALL AT HARE-HILL.
Soon after passing Banks-burn, we arrive at Hare-hill, where a portion of the Wall stands nine feet ten inches in height. This is the highest piece of the Wall that is anywhere to be met with; but, owing to the smallness of the fragment, and to its being entirely deprived of facing-stones, it is less imposing than it would otherwise be. Hutton’s enthusiasm, however, never fails him; his remark at Hare-hill is—
I viewed this relick with admiration: I saw no part higher.
At this point of our progress, the antiquary may be disposed to turn aside for a little, to view two relics of the mediæval period of great interest—Lanercost Priory and Naworth Castle. The priory is a beautiful specimen of the early English style, and bears architectural evidence of having been built somewhere between the years 1155 and 1160. Besides the church, partially in ruins and partially in repair, the refectory and some portions of the monastic buildings remain. The whole structure has been formed of stones taken from the Roman Wall. In addition to some altars preserved in the crypt of the church, several centurial and carved stones are to be seen in the walls of the adjacent buildings.
NAWORTH CASTLE.
Naworth Castle, though still an interesting building, is destitute of some of the attractions which it once possessed. The Roman altars and other primeval monuments collected by lord William Howard, have long been dispersed, and a fire in 1844, almost entirely destroyed the baronial residence of that renowned border-chief, which, until that event, remained nearly in the state in which it was in his own day. The dungeons, however, in which the daring moss-troopers were immured, remain, and two magnificent oak trees near the grand entrance still extend those brawny arms on which, according to tradition, lord William suspended the victims of his lawless power. The load of twenty gasping wretches would not materially weigh down the larger boughs of these fine trees. That the government of lord William—the Belted Will of Border tales—was of a vigorous character, there cannot be a doubt; but that he used his power capriciously, cruelly, or tyrannically, there is no evidence. Lord William seems to have sent the most desperate of his prisoners to Newcastle-upon-Tyne or Carlisle. They would probably have as good a chance for life at Belted Will’s tribunal as at the assizes of either of these towns, if we may judge of the state of feeling towards them from North’s Life of Lord-keeper Guildford. His lordship, then sir Francis North, came to Newcastle, on the northern circuit, in 1676. His biographer says—
The country is yet very sharp upon thieves; and a violent suspicion, there, is next to conviction. When his lordship held the assizes at Newcastle, there was one Mungo Noble, supposed to be a great thief, brought to trial before his lordship, upon four several indictments; and his lordship was so much a south-country judge as not to think any of them well proved. One was for stealing a horse of a person unknown, and the evidence amounted to no more than that a horse was seen feeding upon the heath near his shiel, and none could tell who was the owner of it. In short the man escaped, much to the regret of divers gentlemen, who thought he deserved to be hanged, and that was enough. While the judge at the trial discoursed of the evidence and its defects, a Scotch gentleman upon the bench, who was a border commissioner, made a long neck towards the judge and said—'My laird, send him to huzz, and ye’s ne'er see him mair.'
On rejoining the Barrier, we find, that though the line of the Wall, in its course to the Eden, may yet be distinctly discerned, in very few instances any portion of the masonry remains.