Amesbury Abbey

Amesbury Abbey is a large house in parkland, now used as a nursing home. Built between 1834 and 1840, with further work in 1857 to 1859, it was designed by Thomas Hopper for Sir Edmund Antrobus. The building is constructed of Chilmark limestone ashlar with slate roofs.

The house takes a cubic form of three storeys with attics, representing a grander reinterpretation of its predecessor, which was built in 1660 to 1661 by John Webb for the 2nd Duke of Somerset. The main south front is nine bays wide. Its most distinctive feature is a giant portico of six Composite columns raised on an arcaded rusticated plinth in the form of a porte cochère. The ground and first floors are rusticated with raised quoins and a plain band below the first floor windows. On the piano nobile, a central door within the portico (now blocked) has a stepped keystone and segmental pediment, repeating Webb's original detail. The windows are of plate glass with blind boxes and stepped flush voussoirs worked into the rustication. The second floor has a second plain band beneath the windows, with architraves to the sashes and a cornice on brackets above. A dentilled cornice runs throughout with a low parapet. The portico has a triangular dentilled pediment. The roof is hipped with dormers topped by segmental pediments. A tower to the central light well, set back from the elevations, rises above with a balustrade.

The west garden elevation and east façade are identical, each of five bays. The three central bays are defined by attached Corinthian columns, each carrying a forward section of entablature, with a balustrade between the pedestals. The attic storey has windows between pilasters rising to urn terminals. The windows match those on the south front, though those between columns have architraves and pediments. Symmetrical corniced limestone ashlar chimneys and dormer windows occupy the outer bays. A twentieth-century Amdega garden room is attached to the ground floor of the west side.

At the rear, a service block of plain ashlar in three storeys occupies three bays by five bays equal in width to the main block, with the central bay set out.

The interior begins with an entrance hall leading through a double arcade to a grand stair that rises in two flights within a full-height light well. This light well is enclosed by narrowly spaced arcades at the first and attic floors with balustrades, blind arches above, and a coffered ceiling divided by Greek frets. An octagonal lantern sits above the light well. The corridors behind the arcades at first floor have coffered ceilings. Six panelled mahogany doors open to perimeter rooms. The front drawing room (later a ballroom) on the piano nobile has been subdivided. On the east side, a sitting room has panelled walls, a marble fireplace, and an elaborately moulded plaster ceiling. Behind the main stair at the rear is a secondary stair with flying treads and a mahogany rail on a scrolled iron balustrade, providing access to the second floor. A circular service stair with iron balusters is positioned to the rear. In the bakehouse (now a laundry) at the rear, there is an iron bread oven by William Jones.

Amesbury Abbey represents a major example of Hopper's eclectic style, closely echoing much of Webb's Renaissance house as illustrated in Vitruvius Britannicus. The building was later provided with one-bay Palladian wings by Henry Flitcroft or James Paine I, from which the present dining room and sitting room fireplaces are said to come. The house is also significant as the centre of eighteenth-century culture and wit promoted by the 3rd Duke of Queensbury and his Duchess, known as 'Kitty'.