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Melrose: Church History

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Imperial Gazetteer of Scotland, edited by John Marius Wilson and published by A. Fullarton and Co - 1868

"The original name of the parish was Fordel; and this, in 1136, was substituted by Melrose, the name of the site of the Culdee establishment, arrogated and assumed in that year by the new-fledged Cistertian abbey. Three chapels anciently stood in the district north of the Tweed. One was situated at the village of Gattonside, was regularly built of freestone, and seems to have been appurtenant to some manor. Another, dedicated to St Columba, the far-famed founder of the Culdee establishment of Iona, and giving to its site his abbreviated name with the adjunct signifying a field or pasture, stood at Colmslee, on Allen-water, and had anciently in its neighbourhood the dairy of the Melrose monks, and still survives in some observable vestiges. The third chapel, called Chieldhelles, and consisting of handsome stone architecture, stood in the north-east corner of the parish, on a tiny tributary of the Leader, and still gives its name to the spot which it occupied."