Byre And Barns At Dieu-La-Cres Abbey Farm Farm Buildings At Dieu-La-Cres Abbey Farm

The byre and barns at Dieu-la-Cres Abbey Farm date from around 1820 and incorporate stone from the 13th-century Abbey of Dieu l'Acres. The buildings are constructed from coursed and squared stone with slate roofs. The two-storey byre is connected to a two-storey barn at right angles, along with a single-storey byre range that encloses three sides of a courtyard. The byre features a series of pointed-arched doors and windows on both sides, some of which appear to be made from abbey ruins, while others may have been cut in the 19th century. The building is decorated with carved stones from the abbey, particularly over the openings, using roof bosses, fragments of tracery, and vaulting ribs. The single-storey byre wing has similar doors and windows on its inner face, and its gable wall is adorned with abbey sculpture, including a stone coffin lid as the centerpiece. The two-storey barn wing has a blocked full-height archway, windows, and ventilation slits, also decorated with moulded capitals and roof bosses from the abbey. The interior has not been inspected. A local historian, John Sleigh, noted in 1862 that at the beginning of the 19th century, the ruins of the abbey were partially excavated, and the materials were used to build the stables and outbuildings of the nearby farmhouse. These buildings form a group with the east and west stable ranges of the farm and the farmhouse, representing an important and unusual example of reusing early building materials in a deliberate aesthetic manner, reflecting a kind of antiquarianism.