Interesting facts and features of Byrness burial ground

FR Wilsons impression of how St Francis church would look after the work carried out 1884 

The land which Byrness burial ground sits upon

The land back in 1228 was owned by Kelso Abbey and the Nuns of the Abbey expected to receive a rent from Gilbert de Umfraville who used much of Upper Redesdale to keep his horses, which was disputed by Roger the Rector of Elsdon. The Pope made the final decision in favour of the Nuns

land owned by Kelso 1228

Following the death of Queen Elizabeth 1st in 1603, James the 6th of Scotland became James the 1st of England and during 1604 he requested a survey be carried out in the Borderlands. Byrness at that time didn't exist as a place as the word only related to the burial ground. The survey was primarily about who owned the land and what were the rents being charged. The burial ground at that time was part and parcel of what was known as the Upper shielings or the summer grazing grounds. The summer grounds were the place farmers would drive their livestock to and leave them to graze and fatten over the summer. Below are the place names as they appeared in the 1604 survey of the summer grazing grounds. The burial ground would have been between Cottenshope and Spithope Haugh.

 . These are the Summer grazing grounds as recorded in the survey in 1604 in the order they are written

Caverlee

Coomesdon

Whitlie

Lumsden

Ramshope

Shatloape

The Cat Cleugh

Earle Side

Spithop haugh

Blackborne haugh

Dead Wood

Rookin

Ekinside and Sevensikes

High and low Cottenshop

Phillipe

The lie of the land in Byrness burial ground

 It is said that medieval churchyards and burial grounds contain the remains of ten thousand people with only a small fraction marked and recorded. As a direct result of this a noticeable change occurs whereby the land inside the churchyard wall is much higher than the land on the outside of the wall. This situation occurs in Byrness burial ground as the pictures below demonstrate

The burial ground wall taken from outside

 wall taken from inside the burial ground

There can be little doubt that of the thousands buried in Byrness burial ground there will be casualties of the Anglo Scottish wars, certainly from the English side. Byrness sits only five miles from, even then, a main thoroughfare into Scotland across Carter bar. Many English soldiers would have made their way back from another border skirmish or battle and returned through Redesdale with their dead comrades and the first available place to bury them would have been Byrness.  The notorious Border Rievers also would most likely have made use of Byrness burial ground to bury their own slain family members. Hedley, Hall, Crozier, Heron, Fletcher and Fenwick are all established Reiver names in Redesdale and in Byrness burial ground you will find the graves of their decendents.

 The oldest single gravestone in Byrness burial ground

The oldest gravestone in Byrness burial ground will it seems remain a mystery forever more. A small simple stone engraved BM 1687. He or she shared their year of death with Nell Gwynne the mistress of Charles ll. There is no one recorded in the Elsdon register for that year with the initials BM 

Oldest gravestone 1687

The sheep creep

In the south section of the burial ground perimeter wall is what is commonly referred to as a "sheep creep". These square window like holes with lintels in dry stone walls have been used for centuries in farming to allow sheep passage into adjacent land and fresh pasture. Could it be that this sheep creep in the burial ground wall was to allow sheep in to graze and so maintain the appearance of the burial ground ? There are other sheep creeps in the west wall which have been filled in. There are a handful of churches today experimenting with this idea and so far have found it has been a successful way of maintaining the land and in todays world of climate change a green alternative. The wall itself is most probably 18th century as it contains "throughstones" a technique of placing large stones into the wall which straddle both sides and protrude on either side of the wall, giving the wall strength and stability. According to the Dry stone wall conservation handbook, throughstones were unknown before the 18th century. This might give two possible build dates of the wall. In 1750 Parliament produced a bill instructing landowners that boundaries must be defined . This was called "the enclosures act" and sparked an extensive period of stone walling in England. The second possible date is the building of Saint Francis church in 1796.

Byrness sheep creep