Pease-Dean, a deep, thickly wooded ravine, traversed by a brook, in Cockburnspath parish, Berwickshire, extending 3 miles northward to the German Ocean at a point 1¼ mile E of Cockburnspath village. It is flanked by heights rising from 100 to 727 feet above sea-level; has steeply acclivitous sides; was regarded, in the old times, as a natural barrier against invasion of the east of Scotland by the English; and occasioned the line of the North British railway to deflect from a direct course south-eastward, and to run for 2½ miles south-by-eastward along the crest of its left bank. The old road from Berwick to the Lothians, which crossed it near the mouth, and went down and up its steep sides in a series of zigzags, was the only route by which an English army could proceed on the E past the Lammermuirs; and, on Oliver Cromwell's arriving at it in 1650, was reported by him to his parliament to be a place 'where one man to hinder was better than twelve to make way.' A bridge of 1786, which crosses it on the line of the old road, measures 300 feet in length, 16 in breadth, and 127 in height; and was long regarded as one of the most wonderful structures in Scotland.—Ord. Sur., sh. 34, 1864.
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