PLACE NAME
Kelso Abbey in Scotland was founded in 1128 by a community of French monks from Selkirk Abbey. It overlooked King David I’s new castle in the now vanished royal burgh of Roxburgh. The town of Kelso sprang up around the abbey and prospered. Its name, which derives from Cealc, the Old English word for chalk, refers to an earlier settlement called Calkou, situated on a chalky ridge. In 1540 the abbey sustained major damage in attacks carried out on most of southern Scotland’s abbeys under the orders of the English king, Henry VIII, the so-called Rough Wooing. Having been dissolved in 1560, its last group of monks abandoned it for good in 1587. Like many of the roads on the St Helier’s estate this is named after British monasteries and abbeys in remembrance of the area’s historic ownership by Westminster Abbey. The road names are in alphabetical order, of which Aberconway Road in the north west of the estate is first.
