Saturday Snapshot: Dewars Lane

/ Margaret

Berwick-upon-Tweed is an interesting English town near the border with Scotland, with three bridges crossing the Tweed. There are the Elizabethan Town Walls, Ramparts, Barracks, a ruined castle and quaint passageways like Dewars Lane, which dates back to medieval times. This is what it looks like today.

Dewars Lane, Berwick

The white building on the right at the end of the passageway is now a Youth Hostel, Art Gallery and Bistro. It was built in 1769 and was originally a granary. Its fantastic tilted walls are the result of a fire in 1815, after which it was propped up rather than being rebuilt. It was used for storing grain up until 1985 and was then left unoccupied, gradually becoming derelict. It has recently been restored by the Berwick Preservation Trust.

The artist L S Lowry sketched it in 1936  on one of his many visits to the town and it is now part of the town’s Lowry Trail. Below is Lowry’s pencil drawing of the Lane.

Lowry Dewars Lane

And here is my sketch:

Dewars Lane 001

See more Saturday Snapshots on Alyce’s blog At Home With Books.

 

24 thoughts on “Saturday Snapshot: Dewars Lane”

  3. Wow, that crooked or tilting wall is fascinating. Propped up, you say? Why doesn’t it fall down? Kind of close quarters in that lane. Might make me a little uncomfortable.

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  10. I’ve never seen a place with buildings built so close to each other. Maybe you should be an artist, I like your drawing more than L S Lowry’s .

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  18. Hi Margaret,

    Lovely picture and sketch, the light falling on the buildings at the top of your picture, lend it much more depth and warmth, than I am sure it would have had in Medieval times, but I love it.

    We have just spent the day completing a couple of ‘Treasure Trails’ around a place called Bradford On Avon, a small market town just down the road from us, in Wiltshire. We discovered many small alleys and passageways, similar to your one in Berwick, parts of a town which is so close to us and yet which we have never really explored.

    An interesting post, thanks

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  21. I really enjoyed this post, and it reminded me of an afternoon I spent walking around in a small village in Bedfordshire trying my best to kill all my camera batteries. When a friend saw how many of the old cottages had “wonky” walls, she told me she’d be afraid that the building would collapse. I feel that those old buildings will be around long past the time that I’m gone!

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  22. Oh, I love your sketches. I wish I could do drawings of the places I visit, but I can’t translate what I see into anything meaningful and recognisable on paper. My father did lovely sketches of buildings and landscapes, my mother does beautifully detailed water colours (and so did her mother), while both my daughters can paint and draw. Sadly, the family’s artistic gene has passed me by.

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  23. Whenever I read a mystery novel set in old England, I picture lanes like this in my mind and it makes the scary scenes much more frightening. I can imagine the darkness in small lanes and not knowing who might be lurking there. Very interesting that the building was simply propped up!

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