Anglesey Abbey

Anglesey Abbey is a Grade I listed country house incorporating part of a priory of Augustinian Canons. The building has its origins in the 13th century, was converted to a house in the 17th century, and was enlarged in the 19th and 20th centuries, with part of the latter work designed by Sir Albert Richardson.

The structure is built of limestone and clunch with a steeply pitched, tiled roof. It forms a T-plan with two main ranges. The northern range was originally a first-floor hall with an undercroft and was probably the Abbot's Lodging, originally detached from the southern range. The walls are of coursed clunch with some Barnack limestone, particularly in the lower courses. The east wall features two two-stage buttresses; the upper stage has been rebuilt but the lower stage, of clunch and Barnack on a splayed sill, is 13th century. The upper part of the walls has been rebuilt and the steeply pitched, tiled roof dates to the 19th or 20th century. The western wall is obscured by later building. The original entry was on the west side at the north end. The present fenestration is 17th century or from the 19th or 20th-century restoration, but a two-centred arch and the springing for a second arch at ground floor level are 13th century.

The southern range is also 13th century in origin and built of clunch with some Barnack limestone, though its original use is uncertain. In the early 17th century it was converted to domestic use, probably by the Fowkes family, and its present external appearance is generally that of a house of that period. The roof is steeply pitched with later end parapets and early 17th-century end stacks of clunch and reused Barnack limestone. Five 20th-century gabled eaves dormers replace five similar dormers of earlier date. The main elevation is in five bays, each with a five-light cross-frame casement of clunch or restored in limestone, except for the centre bay which has an early 17th-century two-storey porch. The doorway is set within a round-headed and double-wave moulded arch on a high sill with a renewed jewelled keyblock. Above the doorway is a reset medieval carved stone, and above this is a similar casement window. The porch is surmounted by a pediment with "C" and "S" scrolls on either side of a late 18th-century Coade stone sculpture of Saint George and the Dragon. To the right is a two-storey canted oriel window with cross-frame casements of clunch. In 1955, a gallery was added to the end of the Abbot's Lodging, designed by Sir Albert Richardson.

The interior of the northern range contains two important features. The first is the undercroft, comprising three bays and two aisles with quadripartite rib vaulting with chamfered arches springing from octagonal columns with moulded capitals and hold-water bases. At the walls, the arches spring from triple-lobed corbels. Much of the stonework, including the marble columns, has been renewed. The second feature is on what was formerly the south-west external wall: part of the raking wall arches to what was the staircase entry to the first-floor hall. Four and a half two-centred arches of triple hollow and roll moulding with a continuous roll-moulded label survive, springing from badly mutilated corbels.

The southern range contains little internally from the 1600 alterations. A doorway to the south porch has a reversed arch with spandrels carved with "PW" and "R" for William Reche, prior from 1515, and is probably reset. The fireplaces and surrounds are mostly early 17th century and were inserted during Lord Fairhaven's ownership. The roof dates to around 1600 and is of staggered, butt-purlin construction.

The priory was founded in the early 13th century on the site of a 12th-century hospital of Saint Mary. Much of the priory was dismantled after the dissolution, but one range was converted to a house in the early 17th century. The house was acquired by Lord Fairhaven in 1926, who added some of the buildings on the west side and the gallery on the north.