Berwick is one of the few remaining walled towns in the United Kingdom. The present ramparts were built in the reign of Elizabeth. To the north and east they are formed of earth faced with stone; bastions with cavaliers are placed at intervals, and a ditch, now dry, extends to the river. Fronting the river are four-gun and six-gun batteries defending the entrance to the harbour, and a twenty-two-gun battery commanding the south side. These ramparts which are perforated by five gateways, are generally in good repair, but since 1822 have been destitute of guns save for volunteer practice. The circuit is about 1 mile 3 furlongs; that of the older walls was more than 2 miles. The ruins of the latter, built by Edward I., and also surrounded by a ditch, enclose the suburbs of Castlegate, and the Greens,—the fishermen’s quarter. The Bell Tower, from which alarms were given, and which is least dilapidated, has been recently secured from further decay. Between the extremity of these old walls and the Tweed are the remains of the old castle, which was allowed to become a ruin after the union of the crowns. There are no traces of the churches, monasteries, or other ancient buildings of the town. The barracks, built in 1719, accommodate nearly 600 men; but they are now occupied only by militia, and the governor’s house has become a private dwelling.
The chief public buildings are the town-hall, finished in
1760, a stately building, surmounted by a spire 150 feet high, which contains a peal of eight bells; the new jail, erected in 1849; the corn exchange, which is the principal public hall, opened in 1858; a new infirmary; two assembly rooms; Masonic and Good Templar halls. The parish church is a plain Gothic building, without steeple, of the time of Cromwell. It was thoroughly and tastefully renovated in 1855. The patronage belongs to the dean and chapter of Durham. A week-day lectureship is in the patronage of the Mercers’ Company, London. There are also in the borough, including Tweedmouth and Spittal, three other churches connected with the Church of England, three with the Church of Scotland, four United Presbyterian, two English Presbyterian, two Methodist, one Baptist, and one Boman Catholic. The only church building worthy of notice is Wallace Green United Presbyterian Church, opened in 1859. New cemeteries were opened at Berwick in 1855, and at Tweedmouth in 1858. The town is well supplied with educational institutions; and a local museum was established in 1867, where lectures are delivered during the winter. The town and suburbs have four public reading-rooms, and three newspapers are published. Two bridges connect the town with the south side of the Tweed. The older, which is very substantial, was finished in 1634, having taken twenty-four years in building. It has fifteen arches, and is 924 feet long, but only 17 feet wide. The other, situated a quarter of a mile up the river, is a magnificent railway viaduct, 126 feet high, with twenty-eight arches, which extends from the railway station—a castellated building on part of the site of the old castle—to a considerable distance beyond the river. This bridge was opened by Queen Victoria in 1850.
The Tweed is navigable as far as the old bridge, and the tide flows seven miles further. The entrance to the harbour has been improved and protected by a stone pier, built about sixty yeare ago, which stretches half a mile S.E. from the north bank of the river’s mouth, and has at the extremity a lighthouse with two fixed lights. The depth of water at the bar is 17 feet at ordinary tides, 22 feet at spring tides, but the channel is narrow, a large rocky portion of the harbour on the north side being dry at low water. A long-felt want is now being supplied by the construction of a dock, which was begun at Tweedmouth, September 1873. The number of vessels belonging to the port (1875) is 25 (tonnage, 1459). There entered in 1873, 422 (tonnage, 35,049), and there cleared 424 (tonnage, 35,252). The principal exports are grain, meal, herrings, burnt ore, metal castings, manures; the imports are bones and bone-ash, manure stuffs, linseed, salt, timber, pig-iron. The sea-fisheries employ 230 boats in white fishing, 294 in herring fishing, and 52 in both. Berwick, which has long been famous for its salmon fisheries, is the headquarters of the Fishing Company, which occupies most of the stations on the neighbouring coast and for some miles up the river. The fish are mostly sent to the London market. There is an annual fair held here in the end of May, and the weekly market on Saturday. There are four banking establishments; and, on the whole, the trade of the town is increasing. >
The ancient charter of the borough of Berwick was confirmed by various sovereigns from Edward I. to James I., who added new officers and privileges, but especially gifted to the burgesses all the lands within the liberties which were not private property. These lands, amounting to 3077 acres, or two-thirds of the whole, are partly divided into farms, partly into meadows occupied or let by the resident freemen and freemen’s widows. The annual value of a meadow, seniority determining the allocation, ranges at present from £11, 5s. to £2, 9s. 3d. The roll of freemen contains about 1000, of whom 368 are resident. The total rental of the corporation’s property is now about £10,800. Since the Municipal Reform Act, 1835, the borough has been governed by six aidermen and eighteen councillors; and in 1842 “the power of life and death” wrs removed from the Quarter Sessions to the Newcastle Assizes. The custom of specially mentioning Berwick-on-Tweed after Wales, though abandoned in Acts of Parliament, is still retained in certain proclamations. The title of “county in itself” also helps to recall its ancient history. It is the seat of a Poor Law Union, and the rateable value of the borough (1875) is £53,195. Berwick has sent two members to the English parliament since the reign of Mary. The registered electors number 1285, of whom 368 may vote as freemen, about 200 being doubly qualified. Population in 1871, 8731, or, including the conjoined townships (Tweedmouth, 2809, and Spittal, 1742), 13,282.
Of the origin or early history of Berwick nothing is known. It probably sprung into importance during the long struggle between the Scots and Saxons for the possession of Lothian and the Merse. Egfrid, king of Northumbria, seeking to extend his boundary beyond the Forth, was routed at Dunnichen, 685, and driven back to the Tweed. But it was not until the battle of Carham, 1018, that the latter river was finally secured as the boundary, and Berwick obtained the frontier position to which it owes its fame. It seems rapidly to have grown in size, wealth, and influence. Its name occurs as a royal burgh in the reign of Alexander I., along with Edinburgh, Roxburgh, and Stirling, and with them, from David I., it elected the tribunal which from their number was called the “Court of the Four Burghs.” The castle of Berwick was one of the strongholds given up to Henry II. of England to be security for the homage due by William the Lion as the price of his liberty, but it was restored with the others by Richard Coeur-de-Lion in 1189. At Berwick took place several of the conferences held between Edward I. and the competitors for the Scottish crown, and his decision in favour of Baliol was given in the castle, Nov. 1292. Four years later Edward marched north to punish his rebellious vassal, and began his invasion by an attack upon the town which was at once the key of the kingdom and its commercial capital. The English king, familiar with the place, and infuriated by the repulse of his fleet in the river, led the land attack in person. Being very slightly fortified the town was speedily stormed, and no mercy was shown to the inhabitants. One memorable incident is recounted. A company of trading Flemings held out against the besiegers in their fortified building, the Red Hall, until.it was set on fire. They were bound by their charter to defend it to the last extremity against the English, and they perished in the flames. Berwick never recovered commercially from the massacre and pillage of this terrible Good Friday. Its efforts again to rise were hindered by the ever-renewed Border warfare, and it gradually sunk to the rank of an ordinary market town.
On Edward’s return from his victorious march through Scotland, he determined to make the town impregnable with stone walls, but before his commands could be accomplished it was recaptured by the Scots as a consequence of the English defeat at Stirling Bridge. On Edward’s approach the following year, however, the Scots retired, and during the remainder of his reign it continued in the hands of the English. Here, in 1305, one quarter of Wallace’s body was exposed, and shortly afterwards the countess of Buchan was suspended in a cage from one of the castle towers, as a punishment for courageously performing the privilege of her family by placing the crown on King Robert Bruce at Scone. Edward II. '»pent the winter of 1310 at Berwick after an ineffectual invasion of Scotland. Here, too, on June 11, 1314, the great English army assembled which was defeated a fortnight later at Bannockburn. Jn 1318 the town, now well fortified, was captured by Bruce, through the help of one of the garrison; a siege by Edward, which followed, rendered famous by the engines employed both in the river and land attacks, was not successful. It remained in the hands of the Scots till 1333, when it was besieged by Edward III., and the hope of relief by the Scottish army being disappointed by their defeat at Halidon Hill, about 2 miles from Berwick, the town and castle were immediately, according to agreement, delivered up to the English king. The next 130 years saw Berwick occasionally attacked by the Scots, and sometimes with success, but they held it only for short periods until 1461, when Henry VI., in gratitude for refuge after the battle of Towton, made it over to them. In 1482, during the disputes between James III. and his nobles, it surrendered to the English army, and was never retaken by the Scots. Henceforward it occupied in Scotland, in relation to England, the position for long of Calais in France—an important stronghold, the sole remnant of wide-spread conquest. This position explains the possession by Berwick, until the union of the crowns, of a civil and military establishment (with lord-chancellor, lordchamberlain, Domesday Book, governors of town and castle, &e.) resembling that of a small kingdom. It was that appointed by Edward I. for all Scotland, and was ready to expand, as it had been compelled to contract its sphere, should more territory be again acquired north of the Tweed.
