Page:The National Gazetteer - A Topographical Dictionary of the British Islands, Volume 2.djvu/819

Rh HELLS. 811 M-ELlvOisK The church is adorned with numerous painted windows on various Scripture subjects. There is a district church at Vobster, the living of which is a perpet. cur.* with tin! cur. of Leigh-upon-Mendip annexed, val. 60. The ter dates from Queen Elizabeth's time. The paro- chial charities produce about 70 per annum, which goes to the repair of the church. There are two Church schools for both sexes, and a Sunday-school, held at the buys' school. The Wesleyans have a place of worship. Mulls Park is the principal residence, situated in a finely- wonded park. It is the seat of the ancient family of the Homers. The Rev. J. S. H. Homer is lord of the manor and principal landowner. HELLS, a hmlt. in the par. of Wenhaston, huncl. of Blything, co. Suffolk, 3 miles S.E. of Halesworth. There was formerly a chapel dedicated to St. Margaret. MELLTE, a river of co. Brecon, rising under the Brecknockshire Beacon. It flows by the Vale of Neath, and passing through the Porthyr Ogof cavern for 800 yards, again emerges from its subterraneous course, and after having formed several cataracts, joins the Hepste and Neath at Pont Neath Vaughan. HELLWATER, a hmlt. in the tnshp. of Bowes, North Riding co. York, 4 miles S.W. of Barnard Castle. HELHERBY, a tnshp. in the par. of Wath, wap. of Hallikeld, North Riding co. York, 4 J miles N. of Ripon, and a quarter of a mile from the Helmerby Junction railway station. There is a chapel for Wcsleyans. HELHERBY, a tnshp. in the par. of Coverham, wap. of West Hang, North Riding co. York, 4 miles S.W. of Leyburn, and 2J from the parish church of Coverham. HELMERBY, a par. in the Leath ward, co. Cum- berland, 9 miles N.E. of Penrith, its railway station and post town. It is a small agricultural village situated on the Maiden Way, under Hartside Fell, which rises above the village 1,312 feet. The ascension of this hill is 1 foot in 20, and the surface is of a smooth nature, pro- ducing excellent pasture for sheep. About half the laud is under cultivation, the remainder, about 2,000 acres, in fell and common. The soil is a sandy loam upon a subsoil of sand and gravel. There are two mineral springs, one sulphurous and the other chaly- beate, and some quarries of freestone. A lead mine was rly worked. The living is a rect.* in the dioc. of Carlisle, val. 172. The church, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, a structure of red freestone with a tower, was thoroughly restored in 1849, and contains several ancient monumental stones. There is an endowed school with an annuity of 30, the produce of recently enclosed lands. Melmerby Hall is the principal resi- dence, and is of great antiquity. This parish is subject to the helm- wind, which occasionally blows with great violence. The Rev. John Hall is lord of the manor and chief landowner. There are annual fairs for cattle and sheep held on the 22nd April and 28th September, both of which were established about 1850. HELHORE POINT, a headland on the V. side of JIulroy Bay, co. Donegal, Ireland. It is crowned by a signal tower. ME I A' ESS, a district in the par. of Tongue, co. Sutherland, Scotland. It comprises a post-office station of its own name. There is a Free church. HELPLASH, a tythg. in the par. of Netherbury, co. Dorset, 2 miles S.E. of Beaininster. MELROSE, a par. in the district of Castletown Mel- co. Roxburgh, Scotland, 10 miles N.W. of Jed- h, and 37 from Edinburgh. It is a station on the burgh and Hawick railway. This parish is situated he banks of the river Tweed, under thoEUdon hills, in the extreme N. of Roxburghshire. It is bounded by is. of Berwick, Edinburgh, and Selkirk, and by the of St. Boswells, Bowden, and Lindcan. In ancient it was called Fardel, but assumed its present iation in 1136 46, when David I. founded here the us abbey of Melrose for Cistercian monks from mix, in place of the Culdeo house at Moel or -rhos, originally founded on a "bare promontory " e river Tweed by St. Columba in 635. It contains, .<js the post and market town of its own name, the greater part of the post town of Galashiels, recently constituted the quoad sacra par. of Ladhope, the vils. of Blainslie, Darnick, Eildon, Gattonside, Newstead, and Newton, besides the promontory of Old Melrose, interesting only for its antiquarian associations. The history of the district is almost identical with that of the abbey until comparatively recent times. In A.D. 664 Eata, one of the twelve disciples who accompanied Aidan, the founder of the bishopric of Lisdisfarn, from lona to Northumbria, became the apostle of the upper vale of the Tweed, and was chosen abbot or head of the Melrose establishment, which continued to flourish for at least two centuries, and was a famous nursery for learning and religious men, as Basil, the friend of the venerable Bede, St. Cuthbert, one of the most famous saints of Scotland, and others, who were all filled with zeal for propagating the Christian religion, particularly among their neighbours the pagan Saxons, tUl about the middle of the 9th century, when the Saxon power was broken by the ascendency of the Scots, and the abbey overthrown by Kenneth III. After it had remained for nearly two centuries in desolation, it was removed by David I. to New Melrose, about 2 miles further W., and about a quarter of a mile S. of the Tweed. It was then replenished with Cistercian monks from Rievaulx in Yorkshire, and subsequently became the scene of several historical events, as the death of the first Stuart, Walter Fitzalan, " dapifer regis " in 1177; the meeting of the rebel barons of King John in 1285 to swear fealty to Alexander II., who lies buried below the high altar ; the devastations of Edward II. of England, who burnt the abbey in 1322, but which was restored in 1320 by Robert Bruce, whose heart was buried here. It was twice subsequently partly ruined by the English in 1378 under the reign of Richard II., and again in 1545. On the dissolution of monasteries it was given by Queen Mary to James Earl of Bothwell, and then to the Ramseys and Hamiltons, from whom it came to the dukes of Buccleuch, the munificent proprietors of these ruins, who have preserved the venerable pile for the public admiration, which upon the whole is the most beautiful ruin in Scotland, affording more specimens of Gothic ornament than are anywhere else to be met with. The abbey, though inferior in proportions to many edifices of its kind, and only about half the dimensions of York Minster, is acknowledged to have been the most beautiful of all the ecclesiastical structures of Scotland, and scarcely surpassed by the edifices of any land. What remains is only the principal part of the church, with some traces of the cloisters, which once occupied a square 150 feet deep, surrounded with a spacious arcade, or piazza. The church is built in the form of St. John's cross, the dimensions being 258 feet in length, 137$ feet in breadth, with an hexagonal tower 84 feet high, and the circumference about 943 feet. On the S. side are a door and window each 24 feet by 18, and on the E. a mullioned window 24 feet by 15. It is also adorned with 68 canopied niches, clustered shafts, delicate carvings of plants and animals, buttresses, side chapels, &c. Near the high altar is a marble monument of St. Waldevus, or Walter, the second abbot, who was canonised. In other parts of the church lay many of the noble house of Douglas, the Lord of Liddisdale, who was styled " the flower of chivalry," and many other men of eminence and rank. This pile, though venerable and extremely beautiful in its mouldering grandeur, owes nearly all its modern fame to the graphic descrip- tions of it by Sir Walter Scott in the " Lay of the Last Minstrel," and in his tales of the "Monastery" and " The Abbot." Immediately to the S.W. of the abbey ruins stands the prosperous town of Melrose, situated at the N. base of the Eildon hills, not more than three furlongs S. of the Tweed. It is intersected by the road from Edinburgh to Jedburgh and by the Edinburgh and Hawick railway. The town is antiquely picturesque, with its old houses, partly built out of the abbey ruins, and arranged in triangular form round a green, in the centre of which stands an old cross, kept up by a bequest called the " corse-rigg," or field, about a rood in extent. The