Pilton Abbey

Pilton Abbey is a house dating to the 1840s, although it likely incorporates an earlier core. It is constructed with mass wall construction, rendered on most elevations, with one side of stone rubble. It has gabled, coped slate roofs, with one hipped roof on a service wing that might be earlier. Stacks are prominent, with rendered shafts, some of multiple divisions, projecting cornices, and old pots. Cast-iron rainwater goods are present. The house has a large, roughly rectangular plan, with an entrance on the east side and service wings to the northwest.

The house is three storeys high, with deep eaves and projecting rafter ends. Windows are timber mullioned, with moulded mullions and high transoms, set within small-pane casements. The east front is asymmetrical, with three windows, the left-hand elevation hosting a shallow projecting stack with set-offs and triple shafts. A projecting porch sits alongside, featuring a coped gable with corbelled kneelers and a chamfered Tudor-arched outer doorway, and a Tudor-style front door with planted mouldings. There are two ground-floor and three first-floor windows, the ground-floor windows benefiting from hoodmoulds. An attic dormer, coped and with kneelers, includes a crank-headed one-light window. The service block to the right is gable-ended to the east, with a single first-floor two-light window matching those elsewhere, and a gable stack.

The garden (south) elevation mirrors the style, with gables to the left and right and a small gable over a recessed central bay. There are shallow ground-floor bays to the left and right, with hipped roofs and three-light windows. A two-storey canted bay is centrally placed, containing a half-glazed garden door and a bay window to the first floor. A crank-headed one-light window sits above the bay on the second floor. The outer bays have three-light first-floor windows and two-light attic windows in the gables. Other elevations retain early 19th-century windows, including at least one 16-pane sash which may be from the 18th century.

The interior, though unsurveyed, is known to contain early 19th-century chimneypieces and joinery.

Historically, the building was never part of a monastic site, being known as Lee’s tenement in the 17th and 18th centuries. It was a large house by 1780 and was named Pilton Abbey by 1866.