1982-Oct-pg37_Border Country

1982-Oct-pg37_Border Country

This article came from Chronicle published October 1982. Pages 37

 

Border Country

Author: Mrs I.L.Brice

 

Several weeks ago we spent a holiday in the Border Country – of course we went to Hadrian’s Wall! What a day was chosen to visit this most famous of boundaries – cold, misty, windy, and with a driving, drizzling rain. But this was perfect weather to give the right atmosphere to tread this eerie, ghost-ridden ground and piles of ancient stories. We could imagine how the Roman soldiers must have hated this desolate inhospitable land, and longed to return to their warm sunny homeland.

We also toured the forbidding castles, custodians of strength and power, of Edinburgh, Carlisle, Penrith, and the grim McLellans Castle on the Solway, where Mary Queen of Scots was imprisoned for a short time.

The story of these turbulent, savage times was brought to life in the Kings Own Royal Border Regiment Museum at Carlisle Castle. The splendid exhibition set out in the Keep brings history to life – here came Robert the Bruce, General Leslie in the Civil War when the castle was blockaded for over nine months, ill-starred Bonnie Prince Charlie, and the poor, defeated prisoners from Culloden’s field. Colour-Sergeant Dollery of the 54th Cumberland Regiment, while serving abroad, painted a picture of himself, with wife and son, and wrote these home-sick words:

In many a hardship have I been,
With many a thousand more,
But we will hope soon to return
To our dear native shore.