Launde Abbey

LAUNDE ABBEY

Large house of the early 17th century, restored and added to in the early 19th century. Constructed of finely coursed ironstone rubble with ashlar dressings and a Welsh slate roof. The building is two storeys with attics, arranged in an H-plan.

The principal west front features outer gabled wings, each containing a canted and embattled two-storey bay window with mullioned and transomed windows of 2 and 3 lights, all with ovolo moulding. Above each bay is a 4-light ovolo-moulded mullioned window to the attic storey, with the gable itself corbelled out on moulded kneelers, coped and topped with finials. The main range has a central doorway of circa 1850 in a porch that harmonises with the house, featuring a 4-centred arched doorway with a coped gable corbelled out and carrying finials. The windows flanking this door are not quite symmetrically arranged: to the left are paired 2-light windows and a 3-light window on each floor, while to the right the outer ground floor window has 5 lights and the floor above has 4 lights. A 4-light King-mullioned window sits above the door. All windows are mullioned and transomed with caveto mouldings, and string courses form hood moulds to the ground and first floor windows. Three dormers above have coped gables corbelled out with finials, containing mullioned windows—the central dormer has 4 lights, the outer ones have 3 lights each, all with flat hood moulds.

The north side shows two projecting gable wall stacks and a single corbelled gabled dormer with paired 4-light windows that are Victorian renewals. The rear elevation has outer gabled wings: the northern wing contains a 6-light mullioned and transomed window to the ground floor and 4-light King-mullioned window above it, both with caveto moulding, and four mullioned lights to the attic storey. The southern wing projects the chapel. Between the wings stretches an early Victorian extension of two storeys with a flat roof, comprising four bays of 3-light mullioned and transomed windows on each floor. The south gable wall continues into the chapel fabric, incorporating the shafts of a 12th-century crossing with a fragment of the arch above. Two side wall stacks and two windows—one of 3 lights to the ground floor and windows of 2 and 3 lights above, with a single coped gabled and corbelled dormer—complete this elevation.

The interior contains a staircase of probably late 17th-century date, an open string stair with three slender balusters to each tread, two fluted and one more gently moulded, with a swept handrail terminating in a gentle spiral over the newels. The hall features a 4-centred arched stone fireplace and early 19th-century Jacobean-style panelling. The dining room was probably refurbished circa 1820 using much old material. Its fireplace has a 4-centred arch set between stone pilasters with stone panels above, one dated 1689, all contained within an outer wood chimney piece with ornately worked pilasters, panels, and figures in high relief. A panel dated 1676 is incorporated. The entire room is panelled in the Jacobean style with frieze and blank arcading, incorporating many decorated panels with various low reliefs depicting biblical scenes, probably Flemish, alongside 17th-century English examples with scroll work or geometric designs, one dated 1663. The library and drawing room date from circa 1820. The drawing room features a doorcase with reeded architrave and gothick decoration in its round arched head, with decorative round arched niches flanking an Adam-style marble fireplace and a simple plaster cornice. Victorian additions to the rear represent largely an extension of the service accommodation.