Forde Abbey

Forde Abbey is a country house with a long history, originally founded as a Cistercian Abbey in 1136 and dissolved in 1539. Significant portions of the monastic buildings from the 12th, 13th, 15th, and 16th centuries survive, alongside later country house alterations and extensions from the 17th, 18th, and modern periods. The construction uses rubble walls with dressings in Ham stone, topped with slate and lead roofs.

The surviving monastic work includes the Chapter House, now used as a chapel, featuring two bays of cross-rib vaulting on recessed responds with scalloped capitals; this upper section was rebuilt in the 16th century and altered in the late 17th. The large Dorter, with 13 bays of ribbed vaults, has surviving lower walls of the Frater. Also remaining are a 15th-century kitchen fireplace, a gateway at the west end of the building, a 16th-century porch into the Abbot's Hall, walls of part of the Abbot's Lodging, and a mid-17th century dining room, main staircase, west staircase hall, and walls of a west dining room. Minor jamb features date to the 18th century.

The front (south) elevation, viewed from left to right, incorporates the three-story, three-bay Drawing Room of the Abbot's Lodging, dating back to the 16th century, altered and rebuilt in the 17th, with an embattled parapet. Windows have moulded architraves and cornices; the central upper window is round-headed. The West dining room is similar but two stories high. The Abbot’s Hall, from the early 16th century, is a single-story, four-bay structure with stone mullions and cross-transomed windows, featuring very depressed arches with carved panels (three per bay). Buttresses have three set-offs. A porch, dated 1528, rises to three stories, with a 3-centred arch entrance and a two-story oriel above, incorporating three heraldic panels below each tier. A ground-floor dining room has a projecting verandah with arches, a square-headed window above, and oval windows above that. The north alley of the cloister has seven bays of transomed four-light windows with Y-tracery and a 16th-century frieze. The first floor has 17th-century windows and an embattled parapet. The Chapter House has 18th-century windows at first-floor level.

Notable exterior features include low-relief early Renaissance sculpture on the Abbot's Hall and porch. Interior features include plaster ceilings dating to 1660 in the Prideaux rooms, combining wide bands, flowing Acanthus foliage, and figurework in central medallions, a 17th-century screen in the chapel, and a west staircase from around 1660, featuring turned balusters and square newels with panels of fruit and foliage, along with fine pierced panels of acanthus scrolls and cartouches, replicated on the wall surface. The stair hall has a plaster ceiling.