Jedburgh Abbey

We left Edinburgh, headed south, and stopped at Jedburgh to see the ruin of the Jedburgh Abbey. When we see how beautiful the ruin is, we wonder what the original must have looked like. When we visited, we were told the Jedburgh Abbey ruin, and others we have seen, resulted from a religious conflict, and are not a result of a political war. A search on Google told us otherwise, although the wars could have been fought for religious reasons.

The original Jedburgh Abbey was built by King David I in 1138, on the site where an earlier church stood in 830, and perhaps an even earlier one in the 700s. In 1305 an English Army stripped the lead from the roof, and the Abbey was attacked by various armies in 1409, 1410, 1416, 1464, 1523, 1544, 1545, 1547, and 1548, After some of the attacks, rebuilding took place, but by the mid 1600s they feared the remains of the structure might fall. In 1913 it was placed in the care of the Government, and is now looked after by Historic Scotland.

It was a beautiful sunny day, and at the Scotland/England border there was a man dressed in a “uniform” of kilts, playing a bagpipe, waiting for tourists to take his picture and give him a tip. We saw a couple of men wearing kilts, one in a store, another in a restaurant, during our couple of days in Scotland.