Friday 13 April 2007

Kelso


Had a day out yesterday and visited the Teviot Smokery Water Gardens and Kelso. I like Kelso with its big cobbled square and huntin', shootin', fishin' shops. They were having clearance sales but we didn't tempt ourselves. I don't know how old Kelso is, but it is built where the Teviot and the Tweed meet at the famous Junction Pool and perhaps two and a half miles from the old site of Roxburgh Castle, once called Hroc's burgh in Old English and recorded as belonging to the Earl of Northumberland in 1107. The castle was recorded as Rokesburg in the middle ages when it belonged to the Scottish kings. When the castle fell, the town around the walls disintegrated and the people moved to Kelso.


Kelso Abbey, built in 1128, is a ruin now and hangs over the town like a red-brown ghost.
Floors Castle, said to be the largest inhabited house in Scotland, is still the residence of the 10th Duke of Roxburghe. It was built in 1721 by William Adam for the first Duke of Roxburghe on a site just across the river Tweed from the old Hroc's burgh. Kelso is off to the right of the picture of Floors Castle, which stares straight across the Tweed towards the Cheviot and England.

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