COLDINGHAM, a parish, in the county of Berwick;
including the late quoad sacra district of Houndwood;
and containing about 2830 inhabitants, of whom
a considerable portion reside in the village of Coldingham,
3 miles (N. N. E.) from Reston, which is on the
London and Edinburgh road and the North-British railway.
This place, the name of which is of doubtful derivation,
has a claim to remote antiquity, and seems
to have originally acquired distinction from the erection
of a nunnery, in the seventh century, by Ebba,
daughter of Ethelfrith, King of Northumbria. To escape
from the solicitations of Penda, King of Mercia, who
sought to obtain her in marriage, she resolved to leave
her father's kingdom, and, embarking for that purpose,
was driven by a storm on the promontory of this coast,
which from her derived its name of St. Abb's Head.
The convent that she founded here, appears to have
subsisted till the year S37, when it was plundered and
burnt by the Danes, who inhumanly massacred the
whole sisterhood. Some slender remains of its chapel
existed till about the middle of the last century; but,
the cemetery surrounding it being again appropriated as
a burying-place, they were soon afterwards destroyed.
The MONASTERY of Coldingham is said to have been
founded by Edgar, King of Scotland, about the year
1100, though other writers refer its foundation to a
period anterior to that of the nunnery of St. Ebba, in
the destruction of which by the Danes they say it participated,
and that it was only rebuilt by Edgar. That
monarch, being driven from his throne, fled to England,
where he obtained from William Rufus an army of 50,000
men, for the recovery of his dominions, and from the
abbot of Durham the consecrated banner of St. Cuthbert,
to aid him in reducing his rebellious subjects to obedience.
Having succeeded in re-establishing his kingdom,
Edgar founded or refounded the monastery, which he
dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and made a cell to the
abbey of Durham, from which establishment he placed
in it a prior and brethren of the order of St. Benedict.
The priory continued to flourish in uninterrupted prosperity
from this time, with the munificent patronage
of Edgar's successors, till the reign of Robert III.,
under whose weak government, and during the regency
of the Duke of Albany, the monks placed themselves beneath
the protection of the family of Douglas, of whom
the laird of Home became its sub-prior. Not long
afterwards, James HI. obtained the concurrence of the
parliament for the suppression of the priory, the revenues
of which he wished to appropriate to the endowment
of the chapel royal of Stirling, which he had
founded; but their proceedings excited an insurrection
of the Homes, which terminated in the defeat and death
of that monarch, who was killed in battle, near Stirling,
in 1488. The priory, in 1509, was separated from
Durham by a decree of the pope, and annexed to the
abbey of Dunfermline, whose abbot, Alexander Stuart,
a natural son of James IV., and also archbishop of St.
Andrew's, who fell fighting by his father's side at the
battle of Flodden-Field, became prior. After the death
of Alexander Stuart, David, brother of Lord Home, was
made prior of Coldingham. In 1.^44 the priory was
seized by the English, who fortified and retained possession
of it, against all the efforts of the Earlof Arran,
regent of Scotland, for its recovery; and in the following
year it was plundered and burnt by the Earl of
Hertford, after which calamity it never regained its
ancient wealth and importance. During the usurpation
of Cromwell, it was defended against the assaults of his
troops, by a party of royalists who had intrenched
themselves within the walls, and who vigorously repulsed
the first detachment sent against them. Cromwell,
however, bringing up in person a stronger force,
with several pieces of cannon, shook it to its foundation,
and compelled the royalists to capitulate; and to prevent
it from again becoming an obstacle to his success,
he blew up the church with gunpowder, leaving only
one of the walls standing.
The PARISH, which is about twelve miles in extreme
length, and nine in breadth, is bounded on the north
and north-east by the sea and the Firth of Forth. Its
surface is diversified with hills and valleys: a portion
of the range of the Lammermoor hills traverses it, in a
direction from east to west, and the highest elevation,
VN'ardlaw Bank, is 640 feet above the sea. The valleys
are watered by various streams, the most important
being the river Eye, which, after flowing with a gentle
current through the whole extent of the parish, falls
into the ocean at Eyemouth. The only lake is that of
Coldingham, about a mile west of St. Abb's Head, a fine
expanse of water covering thirty acres of ground, within
300 yards of the coast, and having an elevation of 100
yards above the sea; it is circumscribed by sloping
banks of barren rocky aspect, incapable of plantation,
and abounds with perch, the only kind of fish it contains.
The coast, near St. Abb's Head, is rocky and precipitous,
and indented with numerous caves excavated in
the rock, some of them of large extent, and with natural
fissures, inaccessible from the land, and only to be
entered from the sea at low water, and in calm weather.
The SOIL is various, and, in some parts of the parish,
fertile; but there are large tracts of barren land, incapable
of being brought into cultivation. The whole
number of acres is estimated at about 57,000, of which
6000 are moor and waste, about 500 in woods and
plantations, and the remainder, in nearly equal portions,
arable and pasture. The chief crops are grain of various
kinds, potatoes, and turnips, and the system of agriculture
is improved; many cattle are fattened here, and
driven south, and great numbers of sheep are reared.
The annual value of real property in the parish is £19,770.
The natural woods consist mostly of oak, elm, and birch;
and the plantations of the various kinds of fir, intermixed
with the usual forest-trees. Throughout the parish the
rocks are of the transition formation, and the principal
substrata are greywacke and greywacke-slate; the promontory
of St. Abb's Head is one mass of trap rock,
composed mainly of trap tuffa, amygdaloid, and porphyritic
felspar. A lucrative fishery is carried on, for
which purpose a small harbour was constructed in 1833
at Northfield, about a mile from the village, at an expense
of £1'200, of which sum about one-fourth was
raised by subscription, and the remainder was granted
by government. The fish taken off the coast are cod,
haddock, turbot, and lobsters; and about seven boats
are regularly employed, affording support to thirty-six
families, of which number twenty-nine live in the
hamlet of Northfield. The cod is pickled, the haddocks
smoked, and the turbot and lobsters sent alive to the
London market The village of Coldingham is pleasantly
situated, and contains many neatly-built houses; a
library is supported by subscription, forming a collection
of more than 400 volumes of standard works. The
weaving of cotton affords employment to above thirty
persons. At Reston, in the parish, the Dunse branch
of the North-British railway quits the main line.
For ECCLESIASTICAL purposes the parish is within the
bounds of the presbytery of Chirnside, synod of Merse
and Teviotdale; patron, the Crown. The stipend of the
incumbent is £267; the manse was built in 1801, and
enlarged in 1828, and the glebe is valued at £25 per
annum. Coldingham church, which is a portion of the
ancient monastery, was repaired in 1662, and is well
adapted for a congregation of 827 persons. There is a
place of worship for the United Presbyterian Synod.
Two parochial schools are held; the masters have each
a salary of £25, >yith a bouse and garden, and fees.
The remains of the priory, though dreadfully mutilated,
still display some memorials of original magnificence;
they contain fragments of the richest details in the Norman
style, from its earliest period to its transition into
the early English. The north wall of the church was
formerly covered with series of intersecting arches,
springing from corbels enriched with canopies; but the
shafts of the intercoiumniations have been cut away,
and the whole wretchedly disfigured. The triforium,
however, of five elegantly-designed windows, separated
by alternate ranges of plain and clustered columns, supporting
richly-moulded arches of graceful form, is still
tolerably entire; and various other portions, of elaborate
design, may still be traced. Upon a peninsular rock
projecting into the sea, about two miles to the west of
St. Abb's Head, are the ruins of Fast Castle, connected
with the mainland by a narrow isthmus, which, for
greater security, was cut away, and in its place a drawbridge
substituted. By whom it was originally founded
is not clearly ascertained: it belonged to the family of
Logan of Restalrigg, one of whom, proprietor at the
time of Cowrie's conspiracy, was, several years after his
death, tried and condemned for the part he took in that
transaction, and his estates were forfeited to the crown,
and subsequently conferred upon the Earl of Dunbar.
It is visited chiefly for the grand prospect it embraces
over the German Ocean. There were numerous other
strongholds in the parish, of which the names of Langton
Tower, Heughead, Renton, and Houndwood (the
hunting-seat of the prior of Coldingham) only are recorded.
On the hill to the west of St. Abb's Head are
vestiges of a Roman camp, and on another the remains
of a British camp, defended on three sides by lofty
ramparts; and on the summit of Wardlaw Bank are
traces both of a Roman and a British camp, now nearly
obliterated by the plough.