"Reposing on the sunny bank of its own beautiful river, the modern
town of Kelso looks a fitting rural capital for 'pleasant
Teviotdale.' It has little of the air of an old monastic burgh, and
still less calls up any recollection of the heaps of ruins that
impeded the plans of the English engineers. There is not much
knowledge or tradition of its former state, and but few memorials of
its old inhabitants. Last year (1845) a worthy burgher, who had dug
up in his garden under the abbey walls what seemed to him a rare
coin of a Scotch king, was scarcely well pleased to learn that it
was a leaden _bulla_ of Pope Alexander III., bronzed with the
oxidising of seven centuries.

In the midst of the modern town the abbey church stands alone, like
some antique Titan predominating over the dwarfs of a later
world."[420]

Considering all the dangers and neglect of the centuries, it is
astonishing that so many of the ruins still exist.

The building has consisted of choir or chancel of considerable
length, with north and south aisles, and of a transept and nave
without aisles. The north and south divisions of the transept and
nave form three arms of equal length round the three sides of the
crossing, above which rises the massive square tower.[421] The
church was originally constructed in the late Norman style of about
the end of the twelfth century, passing into the transition
style--the upper part of the tower having been rebuilt at a later
period.[422] Of the chancel only a fragment remains--two of the
south main piers with arches and two stories of arcades above, which
represent the triforium and clerestory. The chancel only had aisles.

The main piers consist of a circular column, five feet in diameter,
with smaller attached half-columns on three sides to carry the
moulded arches between the main piers and the arches between the
latter and the aisles.[423] "The piers have caps of the usual Norman
modified cushion pattern, and the arches were moulded and arranged
in several orders. The arcade immediately over the main arches has a
row of single round shafts, with spreading Norman caps, which carry
a series of moulded arches, occupying the position of the triforium.
The upper arcade, which takes the place of the clerestory, has
shafts of triple form, with wide spreading bases and caps of Norma