The New International Encyclopædia/Abbotsford

AB′BOTSFORD. The estate of Sir Walter Scott, situated on the south bank of the Tweed, about three miles from Melrose Abbey. Before it became, in 1811, the property of Scott, the site of the house and grounds of Abbotsford formed a small farm known as Clarty Hole. The new name was given it by the poet, who loved thus to connect himself with the days when Melrose abbots passed over the fords of the Tweed. On this spot, a sloping bank overhanging the river, with the Selkirk Hills behind, he built at first a small villa, now the western wing of the mansion. He afterward added the remaining parts of the building, on no uniform plan, but with the desire of combining some of the features (and even actual remains) of those ancient works of Scottish architecture which he most loved. The result was a picturesque and irregular pile, which has been aptly called “a romance in stone and lime.” The property has remained in Scott’s family now to the fourth generation. Consult: Irving’s Abbotsford (London, 1850); Lockhart’s Life of Scott (Edinburgh, 1838), and Mary Scott’s Abbotsford (New York, 1893).