Another structure, on the opposite side of the Firth, may be noticed by the traveller. The history of the ‘Tower of Repentance’ is strikingly illustrative of the disordered state of society in this district before the union of the two kingdoms.
A chieftain from the northern side having made a successful inroad into the English border, was crossing the Solway on his return, laden with booty, when a sudden storm arose. In order to lighten his labouring vessel, he threw his prisoners overboard in preference to the cattle which he had stolen. The danger past, he was smitten with remorse. In order to make such amends as he could, he built a beacon-tower which overlooks the Solway, and to this day is called the Tower of Repentance. Tradition avers that the penitent himself carried all the stones used in its erection to the top of the hill. It is not far from the town of Ecclefechan.
In passing along the village of Burgh, the observing visitor will notice the large number of boulder-stones, some of them half a ton in weight, which are strewed over the ground; several of them have been used in forming the foundations of the cottages. They are of granite, and in some distant age have been wrenched from the summit of Criffel, the hill which lends so much beauty to the landscape on the northern side of the Solway.
On the western side of the village of Dykesfield, which we next encounter, is a common that contains several earthen ramparts and temporary camps.
Between Dykesfield and the next station, Drumburgh, an extensive marsh occurs, which even now is occasionally overflowed by the waters of the Solway. Hodgson inclines to the belief, that the Wall ran directly across it. Horsley, however, took a different view of the subject.
From hence to Drumburgh Castle no vestige of the Wall is to be seen; though I think it certain that the Wall did not pass through the marsh, but by Boustead-hill and Easton, for both tradition and matter of fact favour this course of it. The country people often strike upon the Wall, and could tell exactly several places through which, by this means, they knew it had passed, and always by the side of the marsh. Besides it is no way reasonable to suppose that the Romans would build their Wall within tide-mark.
EASTON-MARSH.
After careful inquiry, I am disposed to adopt Horsley’s view; even now, stones which appear to be Wall-stones, are turned up by the operations of the husbandmen in the line which the Wall is supposed to have taken by Boustead and Easton. It need not be a subject of surprise, that the Wall in this district has been so thoroughly removed, as there is no quarry within a convenient distance, and the Wall, therefore, has been the source from which the inhabitants of the country have drawn their supply of building stones. The Romans seem to have gone to Howrigg quarry, which is not less than eight miles south of the Barrier, for their facing-stones; those which they used for the interior of the Wall correspond in character with the proceeds of Stone-pot-scar, a quarry on the north shore of the Solway.
We must now part company with the Vallum. This wonderful earth-work, which has outlived the accidents of seventeen centuries, and which we have traced, with but few interruptions, from the modern representative of Pons Ælii to this point, is not observed going beyond it. As the Vallum falls short of the Wall at its eastern extremity by about four miles, so it does at its western. Horsley, who wrote more than a century ago, and who, consequently, had better opportunities of judging than we can now have, says—
Whether Hadrian’s work (the Vallum) has been continued any further than this marsh, or to the water-side beyond Drumburgh, is doubtful. But I am pretty confident that it was not carried on so far as the Wall of Severus at this end, any more than at the other. And I can by no means yield to Mr. Gordon’s sentiments, that the one, for a good space at each end, was built upon the foundation of the other. However, it is certain that from the side of the marsh to the west end of the Wall there is no appearance of Hadrian’s work, or any thing belonging to it.