roxburgh-1956-vol-1/04_324

Transcriber's notes

Footnotes have been added in brackets as unable to add superscript.

Transcription

No. 503 KELSO PARISH No. 504
trees have now been felled, and the area can be seen
to be covered with more or less superficial workings
- curving adits leading to larger or smaller pits -
which seem to have discharged downhill towards
Jedburgh. About 550 yds. to the NNE., in Quarry
Plantation (673210), there is a single deep pit with
considerable mounds of debris; it is entered from
the SW; or downhill side, but instead of discharging
in this direction, which is towards Jedburgh, the
hollowed extraction-road curves round outside the
pit to N. and NE. and rises gradually to ground level
at the upper end of the site.
671205, 673210 N xix (unnoted, "Old Quarry")
4 September 1950.

(iii) Hundalee Quarry is a single cup-shaped
hollow sunk into the face of the hill 270 yds. nearly
due W. of Hundalee Farm, in Quarry Plantation,
now felled. The pit is about 30 ft. deep at the face,
and great piles of debris have accumulated on the
downhill (E.) side, through which the stone was
extracted.
638186 N xix (unnoted). 4 September 1950

(iv) The old quarry at Tudhope has been filled
up. It was situated SW of the house.
640206 (approx.) N xix (unnoted). 4 September 1950

503. Ditch, Duke's Covert. This ditch runs
NW. from a patch of swampy ground rather less than
200 yds. NE. of Lantoncraigs Fort (No. 456) to a
point just inside Duke's Covert, where it is lost
among modern drains. Its surviving length is thus
about 180 yds. It may either represent a linear
earthwork of which the bank has been destroyed, or
less probably a length of old tract.
631209-629210 N xix (unnoted). 13 September 1947.

KELSO PARISH
CHURCHES, CASTLES, ETC.

504. Kelso Abbey. By 1128 a convent of re-
formed Benedictines had left their earlier home at
Selkirk, to which they had come about 1119(1)
from their mother-house of Tiron in France, and migrated,
under the leadership of Herbert, the third abbot (2),
to a new abbey at Kelso, founded and endowed by
David I. The earlier site, which David had also
provided, had proved unsuitable. This new abbey,
dedicated both to the Blessed Virgin and to St.
John, rose on level haugh-land on the left bank of
Tweed, facing the burgh of Roxburgh (No. 521) and
the royal castle that was known as Marchmount
(No. 905). It was destined to become one of the
largest and the second wealthiest of the religious
houses in Scotland. But its situation, so close to the
troubled Border, laid it open to attack throughout
almost its whole existence. (3) For a time after the
Wars of Independence it had even to be abandoned;(4)
while in the period preceding the Reformation it was
continuously harried by the English. Destroyed by
Dacre in 1522 and by the Duke of Norfolk twenty
years later, it was finally stormed and captured in 1545
by Hertford, who resolved "to rase and deface this
house of Kelso so as the enemye shal have lytell
commoditie of the same"(5). What survived was
given to the flames two years later. Thereafter, the
Commendator, James Stewart, effected some repairs;(6)
but it was reported in 1587 that "the haill monkis of
the monasterie of the abbey of Kelso ar deciessit"(7)
and in 1594 the temporality of the abbey was in-
alien ably annexed to the Crown.(8)
THE BUILDINGS. Little more is left of the abbey
buildings that the W. end of the great church, which
was founded on 3 May 1128,(9) and dedicated by David
de Bernham, bishop of St Andrews, on 27 March
1243. When on the point of death in 1253 this bishop
chose to be buried here and not in his own cathedral.
In view of the condition of the fabric, it is particularly
fortunate that a description of the Abbey as it stood
in 1517, before the major destructions had taken place,
is preserved in the Vatican archives. This is con-
tained in a Latin document published as early as
1864(10) which, however, escaped notice until about
thirty year ago(11) because it was omitted from the
index of the work in which it appeared. The docu-
ment in question is a deposition made before a papal
notary by a certain John Duncan, a cleric of Glasgow
diocese, and contains the following passages a transla-
tion of which deserves to be quoted in full.
"The church or monastery of Calco took its name
from the small town of that name by which it stands.
Its dedication is to St. Mary. . . . It is in the diocese
of St. Andrews, but is wholly exempt from any juris-
diction of the archbishop and is directly subject to the
Apostolic See. . . .It lies on the bank of a certain
stream which is called in their language the Tweed
(Tuid sive Tueda) and which today divides Scotland from the English. . . .
"The monastery itself is double, for not only is it
conventual, having a convent of monks, but it is also
a ministry; for it possesses a wide parish with the
accompanying cure of souls which the Abbot is
accustomed to exercise through a secular presbyter-
1. The year is given as 1109 in the Melrose Chronicle
2. A. Lawrie, Early Scottish Charters, 275
3. Calendar of Papal Registers, Papal Letters, ix, 452; A.D. 1444
4. Liber de Calchou, i, 24.
5. State Papers, Henry VIII, v, pt. iv, 515.
6. Hist. MSS.Com., Milne Home, Wedderburn Castle, 250
7. Acts Parl. Scot., iii, 454
8. Ibid., iv, 62.
9. Melrose Chronicle, s.a.
10. Theiner, Vetera Monumenta Hibernorum et Scotorum historiam illustrantia (Rome, 1864), 527 f.
11. P.B.N.C., xxiv (1919-22), 301 ff.

240.