[5] The village was within the Scottish Marches, the Anglo-Scottish border area of the late medieval and early modern eras, which was characterised by violence and cross-border raids.

[10] Langlands starts by noting that, in times before documented history, Old Bewick must have been the centre of a considerable population, given the extensive remains of camps and dwellings from the pre-Roman period; and asserts that foundations of later buildings in surrounding fields indicate that its inhabitants continued to be numerous after the Roman period, drawn together probably for protection to a fortified tower that had taken the place of the ancient camp.

[14] Langlands discovered five cup and ring marked stones on the east top of Bewick Hill in the 1820s; these are amongst the earliest to be documented in Britain, notably in George Tate's 1865 The Ancient British Sculptured Rocks of Northumberland.

[15] Upon the discovery in 1852 of similar stones near Roughting Linn, near Doddington, Tate took it on himself to investigate the occurrence of these "singular and mysterious inscriptions", using the platform of his presidency of the Berwickshire Naturalists Club to promulgate interest in the subject.

Malcolm III had been killed in 1093 whilst campaigning near Alnwick, by Morell of Bamburgh, a steward of Robert de Mowbray, Earl of Northumberland, and was interred at Tynemouth Priory.

[19] J. C. Hodgeson, writing in 1905, states that Bewick and Eglingham were lands owned by Morell of Bamburgh, confiscated in 1095 after a conspiracy to depose William II of England and place Stephen of Aumale on the English throne.

[24] Old Bewick reverted to the Crown in January 1539 during the period of the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII, and in 1551 a grant of possession was made to John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland.

[27] In his 1891 The Border Holds of Northumberland, Cadwallader John Bates notes:[28] A most remarkable picture of the desolate and barbarous condition of the North of England has been left by Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini, afterwards Pope Pius II, who passed through it disguised as a merchant in 1486, on his return from a mission to Scotland.