The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Abbotsford

ABBOTSFORD, a fording-place of the Tweed near its confluence with the Yarrow; the name given by Sir Walter Scott to his property there bought in 1811, in memory of its use by the monks of Melrose Abbey, it being at the time known as the Clarty [Filthy] Hole. The site is a low hillside on the southern bank, overlooked by the Selkirks. At first only a villa, now the west wing of the pile, he was seized with the idea of founding a great feudal family of the old Scotch pattern, with this for a baronial seat; and gradually added other sections, copying old Scotch mansions or ruins, or special features of them, making an irregular, rambling, picturesque abode, “a romance in stone and lime.” It remained in Scott's family for four generations, but has in recent years been leased to Americans. Consult Irving's ‘Abbotsford’ (London 1850); Lockhart's ‘Life of Scott’ (Edinburgh 1838); Scott, Mary ‘Abbotsford’ (New York 1893); Smith and Crockett ‘Abbotsford’ (ib., 1905).