Jedburgh

Ten miles south of Melrose, JEDBURGH nestles in the lush valley of the Jed Water near its confluence with the Teviot, out on the edge of the wild Cheviot Hills. During the interminable Anglo-Scottish Wars, Jedburgh was the quintessential frontier town, a heavily garrisoned royal burgh incorporating a mighty castle and abbey. Though the castle was destroyed by the Scots in 1409 to keep it out of the hands of the English, its memory has been kept alive by stories: in 1285, for example, King Alexander III was celebrating his wedding feast in the great hall when a ghostly apparition predicted his untimely death and a bloody civil war; sure enough, he died in a hunting accident shortly afterwards and chaos ensued. Today, Jedburgh is the first place of any size that you come to on the A68, having crossed over Carter Bar from England, and as such gets quite a bit of passing tourist trade, most of it heading straight for the town's ruined abbey.

Founded in the twelfth century as an Augustinian priory, Jedburgh Abbey (April-Sept daily 9.30am-6.30pm; Oct-March Mon-Sat 9.30am-4.30pm, Sun 2-4.30pm; HS; £3.30) is the best-preserved of all the Border abbeys, its vast abbey church towering over a sloping site right in the centre of town, beside the Jed Water. Built in red, yellow and grey sandstone, the abbey church can appear by turns gloomy, calm or richly warm, depending on the weather and the light. The abbey was burned and badly damaged on a number of occasions, but by far the worst destruction was inflicted by the English in the 1540s. Entry is through the bright visitor centre at the bottom of the hill, where you can view Jedburgh's most treasured archeological find, the Jedburgh Comb, carved around 1100 from walrus ivory and decorated with a griffin and a dragon. All that remains of the conventual buildings where the canons lived are the foundations and basic ground-plan, but then Jedburgh's chief glory is really its Abbey Church, which remains splendidly preserved. Entering via the west door, the three-storey nave's perfectly proportioned parade of columns and arches lies before you, a fine example of the transition from Romanesque to Gothic design, with pointed window arches surmounted by the round-headed arches of the triforium, which, in turn, support the lancet windows of the clerestory. Be sure you climb up the narrow staircase in the west front to the balcony overlooking the nave, where you can contemplate how the place must have looked all decked out for the marriage of Alexander III to Yolande de Dreux in 1285.

It's a couple of minutes' walk from the abbey round to the small square Market Place, up the hill from which, at the top of Castlegate, stands Jedburgh Castle Jail (April-Oct Mon-Sat 10am-4.30pm, Sun 1-4pm; £1.25), an impressive castellated nineteenth-century pile built on the site of the old royal castle, with displays on prison life throughout the ages. Back down near the Market Place, signs will guide you to Mary, Queen of Scots' House (June-Aug daily 10am-4.30pm; April-Oct Mon-Sat 10am-4.30pm, Sun noon-4pm; March & Nov Mon-Sat 10.30am-3.30pm, Sun 1-4pm; £2). Despite the name, it seems unlikely that Mary ever actually stayed in this particular sixteenth-century house, though she did visit the town during the eventful year of 1566, staying at a place owned by her protector, Sir Thomas Kerr. The attempt to unravel her complex life is cursory, the redeeming features being a copy of Mary's death mask and one of the few surviving portraits of the Earl of Bothwell. One curious feature of all Kerr houses is that the staircases spiral to the left for ease of sword-drawing, giving rise to the Scottish term for left-handedness, "kerry haunded" or "kerry fisted".

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