Minster Abbey

Minster Abbey is a monastic grange, now functioning as an abbey, originally built in the 11th and 12th centuries and substantially altered around 1413. It is constructed of rubble, flint, and dressed stone details, with a plain tiled roof. The building was originally arranged around three sides of a courtyard, with a chapel on the south side and domestic and office ranges on the west and north sides.

The entrance front faces north and represents the north front of the north wing. This elevation dates primarily from the 12th century but has undergone significant modification. It is two storeys tall, set on an irregular plinth with a string course and boxed eaves beneath a hipped roof topped with a stone stack at the far left and brick stacks to the left and right. The left end bay projects and features a two-tier 15th-century cinquefoiled window. The left end of the main range was probably rebuilt at the same time, with a 15th-century window interrupting the string course at this point. Two 12th-century windows occupy the first floor, with one blocked to the right. The first floor also contains three 17th-century segmental-headed three-light mullioned and transomed wooden casements. The ground floor displays irregular fenestration, including a 20th-century trecusped two-light window and 17th-century segmental-headed mullioned and transomed windows. A 15th-century three-panelled door positioned to the centre right sits within a four-centred arched doorway with chamfered moulding and moulded surround. The door's spandrels bear the arms of Thomas Hunden, Abbot of St. Augustine's, Canterbury (1405–1420). This door interrupts earlier pilaster strips.

To the left stands a derelict and partly ruinous 19th-century extension and wall of flint. A double projecting block with large cart doors occupies the right side, featuring a round-headed window above and a boarded door with sidelight to the left, both with pointed arched heads. This wall extends approximately 8 feet high and about 20 yards in length.

The left return contains a 12th-century round-arched shafted window in the upper wall above the 19th-century extension. The right return forms the rear of the late 11th-century west range, dominated by a central gabled three-storey projection originally built as two storeys with battlements. The elevation now displays seven 20th-century gabled dormers and four 15th-century two-tier trecusped and cinquecusped windows.

The rear elevation faces the inner courtyard. The main range features a thickened ground floor defined by a string course; the upper course displays much finer masonry. Pilaster strips are evident throughout. Two 12th-century windows occupy the first floor to the left, with one blocked to the right. Three two-tier cinquefoiled windows with double quatrefoiled mid-panels, heavily restored, are recessed in the lower floor. A chamfered doorway with panelled door stands to the left.

The west range is two storeys tall with a single dormer and central stack. Three 15th-century windows on the first floor are separated by small slit windows, with a blocked 12th-century light to the right. The ground floor has two 15th-century windows and a round-arched doorway with small sidelight; the semi-circular head is fashioned from a single stone block. The fabric shows considerable alteration. The door and sidelight are set within a small area rebuilt in ashlar. The remainder of the lower ground floor displays herringbone-pattern masonry with levelling courses of flint, extended onto the tower to the left. This tower, now only its northern wall remaining, originally served as the west tower of the chapel (now demolished). Currently two storeys, it features a shafted recess with pierced light on the first floor to the east and similar arcading at the north-west corner. Ground floor remains include arcading to the east and a sculpture of Christ in Mandorla on the west, both probably 19th-century reconstructions. A newel stair occupies an ashlared well in the north-west corner.

The interior was substantially refashioned around 1413 by Abbot Hunden. The west range may contain a parallel rafter or scissor-braced roof, though this is obscured by 20th-century alterations. The north range features a crown post roof with moulded octagonal posts; those at either end are only attached shafts framing the structure. The timber is smoke-blackened. An early 18th-century dogleg stair with turned balusters is present. The slype between the chapel tower and west wing now functions as a small chapel with a groin vault spanning two and a half bays.

The site has been an abbey for Benedictine Nuns since the 1930s. It occupies the location of the Abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul, refounded here around 750 and destroyed by the Danes in 840. The abbey was transferred to St. Augustine's in 1027, after which the building served as the central grange of the abbey's extensive holdings on the Isle of Thanet. It was already leased into private hands by the time of the Dissolution and remained a farmhouse until 1937.