Ascending the Tyne, we come to Hexham, an imposing town as approached by
the railway, with the Moat Hall and the abbey church occupying
commanding features in the landscape. The Moat Hall is a large and
ancient tower, notable for its narrow lights and cornice-like range of
corbels. The abbey church, formerly the cathedral of St. Andrew, is a
fine specimen of Early English architecture, of which only the transept
and some other ruins remain, surmounted by a tower rising about one
hundred feet and supported upon magnificent arches. Here is the shrine
of the ancient chronicler. Prior Richard, an attractive oratory: and the
town also produced another quaint historian of the Border troubles, John
of Hexham. It is an antique place, and almost all of its old buildings
bear testimony to the disturbed state of the Scottish frontier in the
olden time, for not far away are the Cheviot Hills that form the
boundary, and in which the Tyne takes its rise. Similar evidence is also
given in Haltwhistle, Hexham's suburb, across the narrow river.
[Illustration: HEXHAM.]