KELSO, a t. in Scotland, finely placed on the n. bank of Tweed, opposite to the point where that stream receives the waters of the Teviot. The name was anciently written Kaichu or Caichon, and is supposed to have had its origin in a precipitous bank abounding in gypsum, still called the Challcheugh. The town derived its importance, if not its existence, from a richly endowed abbey of Tironensian monks, planted at Selkirk in the year 1113, by king David I., when prince of Cumbria, and transplanted, after his accession to the Scottish throne in 1124, " to the church of the blessed Virgin Mary, on the bank of the Tweed beside Roxburgh, in the place called Calkon." The abbey was ruined by the English under the earl of Hertford in 1545. and all that now remains of• it is part of the abbey church. It Is' in the later Norman or Romanesque style, and had a nave of two bays, n. and s. transepts each of two bays, a central tower still 91 ft. high, and a choir of unascertained length. The more modern parts of the town are
well built. A handsome bridge, designed by Beanie, connects Kelso with its suburb of Maxitvellheugh, and commands a noble view. On the n.w. of the town, in the midst of a beautiful park, is Floors castle, the seat of the duke of Roxburgh; it was built in 1718, from the design of sir John Vanbrugh, and was enlarged and improved by the present duke front the designs of the Into Mr. Playfair of Edinburgh. On the opposite bank of the Tweed are the ruins of Roxburgh castle, once the strongest fortress on the eastern border. 'rite town of Roxburgh, which rose under the shelter of its walls to be one of the four chief towns in Scotland, has so completely disappeared, that scarcely a vestige of it remains. Kelso was made a burgh of barony in 1634. It has no manufactures, and little trade, although three newspapers arc published in it. Its pop. in 1871 was 4,564.