Hotels near the Jedburgh Abbey

In an area steeped in early Christian history, Jedburgh Abbey is one of the best-preserved religious institutions in the region.

Built of local stone over 100 years after its original foundation, Jedburgh Abbey reflects the Romanesque and early Gothic style of the great European church foundations of the time. Set on the bank of the Jed Water, the slope to the river allowed the grand, flowing arches of the abbey itself to stand higher than the cloister, chapter house, cellars and accommodation areas built lower down.

The cloister garden - replanted in 1986 - recreates what it would have looked like around 1500, at its heyday, although its plan dates back to the 13th century, with a central juniper surrounded by various plant beds and potted herbs, for medicinal purposes.

The Visitor Centre, as well as having interactive exhibits which rerceate what the Abbey would have looked like in its heyday, also houses 8th-century carvings and archaeological finds that have been excavated from the abbey grounds, indicating even earlier religious associations of the site.

While the various border skirmishes during the Wars of Independence between Scotland and Edward I and his successors necessitated constant rebuilding, the fact that Jedburgh Abbey has come down to us in better shape than its sister institutions in the area - Kelso, Drayburgh and Melrose - is the result of it being used as the town's parish church after the Reformation until 1875, when a new parish church was eventually built on the other side of the river. It was then that the Marquis of Lothian paid for major repairs to the Abbey, leaving it a better state for when the abbey's care fell to the State in 1913.