Old Abbey House and walls to Abbey Close and Trendell's Garden

Old Abbey House is mostly a late 18th-century dwelling, though the earliest parts of the north service range probably date from the early 18th century and incorporate fragments of earlier, possibly late 16th-century fabric. The building was extended and modified from the mid- to later 19th century and in 1904–5, with minor alterations later in the 20th century to accommodate council offices and archives.

Materials

The entrance front of the main house and service wing are of rubblestone with predominantly 18th-century red brick dressings. Later 19th- and early 20th-century additions are in red brick and dressed stone. On the eastern garden front, the upper floor is rendered with 19th-century brick dressings; the later ground-floor bays and the billiard room are in brick and dressed stone. All parts of the house have slate roofs.

Plan

The main body of the late 18th-century house was roughly square on plan, of two storeys divided into three symmetrical bays, with a hipped roof. A central corridor runs east–west with rooms to either side on each floor, served by stacks to the outer walls. Rooms on the garden front were altered, apparently in the mid- to later 19th century, by the addition of square and bowed ground-floor bays, and a series of rooms leading to a new billiard room were added. In 1904–5, the entrance and stair halls were reordered and the house was extended by a bay to the south. The west front was altered by moving the entrance to the original southern bay and inserting a large stair window serving a new or realigned stair.

The former service wing, which probably predates the house and is thought to be of early 18th-century date, is of two storeys and three structural bays, with an internal stack between the central and southern bays and now truncated stacks serving the northern rooms.

Nineteenth-century accommodation was added in piecemeal fashion, enclosing formerly external walls and creating a small inner yard behind the billiard room and corridor. In the late 19th or early 20th century a new service stair was inserted, running from ground floor to attics.

There are cellars beneath the south-western part of the main house, which may also predate the house.

Exterior: Main House

The main house, originally symmetrical, has an asymmetrical entrance elevation. It has flush, soft red brick quoins and a shallow moulded timber cornice to a hipped roof. Tall stacks are rendered and have deep moulded caps. To the right is a large projecting porch in red brick with stone dressings, reached by curved stone steps. It has a deep canopy with a flared roof supported on robust consoles. Within a moulded, round-arched entrance is a pair of oak doors with moulded muntins. They have unusually long, ornate strap hinges which follow the curve of each doorhead and matching door furniture. Above the entrance is the inscription: 'THROUGH THIS WIDE OPENING GATE/NONE COME TOO EARLY NONE RETURN TOO LATE' (the source of the quotation appears to be Alexander Pope's poem 'The Second Satire of the Second Book of Horace, Paraphrased' written in 1734). On each return is a small window. The inner entrance is lined in red brick and has a moulded stone inner doorcase, along with glazed margin lights and an overlight set with coloured glass; the doors are part-glazed, with the lower sections panelled. To the left of the entrance is a single-storey canted bay in similar manner, with sash windows and a low-level light to the cellar stair; to the right is a narrow window with coloured leaded glass. On the first floor the outer windows are sashes in earlier openings with brick quoins and flat brick arches. The central window, which had been similar and was enlarged in 1904–5, is a three-light mullion and transom window, also with leaded lights and coloured glass. To the right, the set-back, two-storey bay, added in the early 20th century and matching the earlier house, has a single cambered-arched sash window per floor. In contrast to the cornice of the original house, the southern extension has oversailing eaves. The south elevation of the added bay is rendered and to the left has a tripartite ground-floor window and sashes above, and a blank wall accommodating a stack to the right.

The garden front has a central entrance within a stone Tuscan doorcase with fluted columns and a dentil cornice. The bow window to the right, square bay to the left, and added southern bay have plain Tuscan pilasters and a dentil cornice that closely echo this detail but are not identical. The square bay and southern bay have sash windows; those to the southern bay are horned. The bow window has casements with fixed overlights. The first floor, in five bays, has horned sashes with brick dressings beneath slightly cambered arches; a photograph of around 1900 shows that the central window was previously pedimented. The billiard room's garden elevation is of a single storey, with canted bays faced in stone, matching the rest of the house. The north wall has a shaped gable over a rough rubblestone base, parts of which may predate the building (possibly originally a boundary wall integrated as part of the later phase). The garden elevation of the single-storey series of rooms linking it to the house is predominantly glazed, with horned sashes above rendered panels, between simplified Tuscan pilasters; this has a pitched tile roof.

Exterior: Service Wing

The west elevation of the two-storey service wing has four unequal window bays and an entrance in the northern bay. It is probable that much of the fabric and structure of this elevation belongs to the early 18th century, predating the main body of the house. The door, which is later 20th century, is beneath a fanlight in a repaired brick opening. It is set beneath what is probably an early 20th-century coved canopy, supported on brackets on stone corbels. Windows on both floors have red brick quoins and cambered arches; in the second bay these are wide and on the first floor the arch has been rebuilt. Windows to the ground floor are predominantly of 20th-century date and are, from north to south, deep-set four-light casements, a six-over-six pane sash and two-light casements. The north gable wall and plinth of the southern bay are rendered. On the first floor is an unusual set of probably 18th-century, multi-paned, metal casements with pointed arched glazing in rectangular frames. The northern window is tripartite and divided by a transom and the wider central section has intersecting glazing bars. Most have their original quadrant stays and spiral catches.

Interior

Apart from the drawing room, which was subdivided to form a muniment room for the council, the principal rooms have changed relatively little since the 1920s and most retain their plan form, fireplaces, moulded cornices and ceilings, doorcases, doors and windows with their fixtures. The entrance hall and inner stair hall are treated in a Jacobean revival manner, divided by an Ionic timber screen enriched with strapwork decoration. The open-well, closed-string stair has robust square-sectioned moulded newels and splat balusters. South-eastern rooms of 1904–5 have moulded ceilings and ovolo moulded frames with coloured glass panes and six-panel doors. There is a six-panel door to the cellar which has a flagstone floor and rubblestone walls, possibly predating the rest of the house.

The former dining room, later the committee room, is lined in small panelling in vernacular revival manner, incorporating a fireplace within a wide alcove flanked by smaller alcoves, one with a door to the kitchen. The chimneypiece has a timber mantelpiece with shallow shelves below it; the grate (of around 1900) is flanked by Delft tiles.

In contrast to the above are the rooms appointed with classical decoration and fittings. These have richly moulded friezes and cornices, in the inner hall for example with an anthemion pattern; doorcases have panelled linings and tall, enriched bracketed cornices and doors are of six fielded panels. The former morning room, later the Mayor's parlour, has a marble chimneypiece, deep moulded cornice and frieze, a panelled ceiling which mirrors the bow window, an enriched, moulded doorcase and a six-panelled mahogany door. The window has a panelled architrave and shutters. The former drawing room, now subdivided, has similar doorcases and panelled window architraves.

The frieze and cornice of the inner hall continues to the passage and entrance lobby to the garden which has an inner glazed screen with a central door, all with slender glazing bars with shaped heads. On the first floor the equivalent space was formerly two rooms, one possibly a dressing room, one with an anthemion cornice, one with enriched brackets.

On the first floor, most rooms in the original house have richly moulded cornices and doorcases and have classically detailed chimneypieces. Of particular note are the fireplace in one room, which has paired, reeded columns with paterae at the base, relief panels depicting putti and wreathed female heads, and marble slips; the fireplace in another room which retains its 19th-century gothicised grate; and an early 20th-century cast-iron patented Gold Medal Eagle Grate, which has doors enclosing the grate and opening side panels disguised as tiles, in a moulded oak frame.

The billiard room is at the northern end of a series of linked rooms, leading from the main house. The dado is lined in diagonal match boarding laid in chevron pattern, and chamfered vertical boards above. The upper lights of the windows have coloured glass panels, in a standard decorative pattern for the day, as seen elsewhere in the house, but also include lozenge-shaped painted glass panels depicting the Crow and Pitcher and the Quack Frog from Aesop's Fables. It is separated from an ante room by a pair of glazed doors that have coloured glass panels at the centre of which is a white rose. The ante room has coloured glass to the windows, noted to have been resited from the Victorian east window of Church St Nicholas. This room is separated from the room to the south by a glazed screen. The ante room fireplace has a richly moulded and inlaid timber surround and tiled (probably Minton) slips, again depicting the white rose. To the rear of the ante room is a blocked 19th-century Gothic arched opening.

Within the ground floor of the former service wing a few elements are visible: a shallow, chamfered ceiling beam with run-out stops, a now internal, splayed mullion window and evidence of some fragments of reused timbers, possibly fragments of the late 16th-century house (known as Master Stone's Lodgings) which is recorded to have been in roughly the same position within the abbey precinct. Deep cornices and door architraves on the less altered first floor point to an earlier 18th-century date for this range. Fixtures and fittings include a 19th-century four-centre arched stone fireplace on the ground floor. On the first floor, there is a simple moulded 18th-century fireplace surround, and a late 19th-century fireplace surround with a cast-iron grate. In the northern room, formerly the bishop's Prebendal, is a later 19th-century bolection moulded fireplace surround and round-headed grate, lined with Minton tiles designed by John Moyr Smith, their chief designer, depicting figures from Arthurian legends.

The service stair from ground floor to the attic has square newels with shaped heads, stick balusters and a deep, moulded, oak rail. The roof over the service wing is of side purlin construction, cut away to accommodate the stair. There is a lath and plaster partition between the northern and central bays.

Subsidiary Features

There are rubblestone walls and piers with some ashlar work to the north side of the plot and to Abbey Close (west), which are connected to Old Abbey House. The north boundary wall integrates a tall gateway with a Gothic arch through to the garden to the east of the house and several blocked openings. It is possible that the limestone ashlar blocks in the north wall may be reused material from earlier demolished abbey buildings. There are two bicycle shelters to the west of the north range, built against earlier rubblestone walls. The low-set, capped rubblestone wall to the west of the house to Abbey Close appears to date to the later 20th century; rebuilt following the changes to the road layout of Abbey Close. Other walls not connected to the house which stand within the bounds of the scheduled area for the remains of Abingdon Abbey have not been assessed.