Tweedmouth sits upon the hither shore of Tweed, clad in grime and clinkers. Like a mudlark dabbling in the water but not cleansing himself in it, Tweedmouth seems to acquire no inconsiderable portion of its dirt from its foreshore. Engineering works and coal-shoots are responsible for the rest. Little or nothing of antiquity enlivens its mean street that leads down to the old bridge and so across the Tweed into Scotland. The roofs of Berwick, clustered close together and sealing one over the other as the town ascends the opposite shore of the river, are seen, with the spired Town Hall dominating all at the further end of the long, narrow, hump-backed old structure, and away to the left that fine viaduct of the North Eastern Railway, the Royal Border Bridge. But the finest view, and the most educational in local topography, is that gained by exploring the southern shore of the Tweed for half a mile in an easterly direction. An unlovely waterside road, it is true, a maze of railway arches spanning it, and shabby houses hiding all but the merest glimpses of Tweedmouth church and its gilded salmon vane, referring to the salmon-fishery of the Tweed, but leading to a point of view whence the outlook to the north-west is really grand. There, across the broad estuary of the Tweed, lies Berwick, behind its quays and its enclosing defences. Across the river, in the middle distance, goes Berwick Bridge, its massive piers and arches looking as though carved out of the rock, rather than built up of single stones. Beyond it, in majestic array, go the tall arches of the Royal Border Bridge, and, in the background, are the Scottish hills. Tweedmouth, its timber jetty, its docks, and church spire, and its waterside lumber are in the forefront. This, then, is the situation of Berwick, for centuries the best-picked bone of contention between the rival countries of England and Scotland; the Border cockpit, geographically in the northern kingdom, but wrested from it by the masterful English seven hundred and fifty years ago, and taken and re-taken by or from stubborn Scots on a round dozen of occasions afterwards. Sieges, assaults, stormings, massacres under every condition of atrocity; these are the merest commonplaces of Berwick’s story, until the mid-sixteenth century; and the historian who would write of its more unusual aspects must needs turn attention to the rare and short-lived interludes of peace. [Picture: The Scottish Border: Berwick Town and Bridge from Tweedmouth]