Games Monks Play

Trip Start May 11, 2011

188

Trip End Jun 11, 2011

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What I did

Visited Jedburgh Abbey

Flag of United Kingdom Jedburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
Monday, May 16, 2011

Jedburgh was our first port of call when we entered Scotland last week but we were too late to see the Abbey so we're back. Like all of the abbeys in the Borders it’s been knocked about but Historic Scotland have done a good job of making the remains accessible. You don’t even have to go outside if you don’t want to as there’s a big glass conservatory type viewing arrangement.

I always love the archaeological stuff at places like this and all the bits and pieces they find. The stand out thing for me at Jedburgh was a stone board for the game of Merelles, what we know as Nine Men’s Morris today. It’s kind of nice to know that the monks had a few larks as well as all that praying and illumination of manuscripts.

I also love those little green metal signs with white writing on that you get at historic monuments as I remember coming across them when I was little. Jedburgh has a good one for the Room of Uncertain Function. I think it takes a bit of nerve for an organisation like Historic Scotland to admit that they don’t actually know what something is and to be so certain that they never will know what it is that they make a sign in metal that says so. Plucky.

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