Hexham is a very imposing-looking town, as it is approached from the railway. The Moot Hall and the Abbey Church occupy commanding features in the landscape. The Abbey Church was at one time a cathedral, dedicated to St. Andrew. Every building in Hexham that can boast of any antiquity bears testimony to the disturbed state of the old times. This is the case also with Haltwhistle, on the left bank of the Tyne, and other Northumbrian towns. Those who are in the habit of spending time in amateur gardening may be interested to know that the gloves called “Hexham tans” are manufactured here, and sent into the country to be sold at exactly double the price they bring in Hexham. Formerly hats like the Monmouth caps were made here, but, as in Monmouth, all the factories are now closed. Hexham has produced two remarkable chroniclers--John of Hexham and Prior Richard. [Illustration: HEXHAM.] [Illustration: BLACK GATE, NEWCASTLE.] The Black Gate at Newcastle-on-Tyne is a singular example of the architecture of the period we have been describing. Gloomy and forbidding it looks, as if really every man’s hand was against his neighbour, and his neighbour’s against him. It has been recently destroyed, but the engraving is taken from a photograph that was fortunately made before. Of course the windows are modern in comparison with the rest of the building. This gate was built at an enormous cost in the reign of Henry III., and, as a recent chronicler has said, “it is apt to convey a gloomy impression of Norman character and times, in passing under the low and narrow arch. Louring and characteristic is the effect of its great depth, thirty-six feet, and suggestive of thoughts of the awful dungeons of the mighty barons, and the deeds of cruelty too often perpetrated in them.” The older fortifications were quite inadequate for the defence of Newcastle against the Scots, who seem to have ravaged it at will. Part of them remained until very recently behind the priory of Black Friars. The history of the walls is very illustrative of the times. On one of the inroads of the Scots, after they had exhausted the old programme of plunder and fire, they carried off a wealthy citizen with them to Scotland, and held him for ransom. This was not long in coming, and on his return to his town he resolved to protect the city with walls in order to prevent similar accidents. In this he was assisted by the inhabitants and the King, and he was enabled to build a wall of twelve feet high and eight feet thick, strongly resembling, it is said, the walls of Avignon. This wall measured about a mile and three quarters in circuit, and was surrounded with a ditch of more than twenty yards in breadth. There were said to be seven gates in these walls, and seventeen round towers, and effigies of men cut in stone to represent watchers. All these works were completed in the fourteenth century.