St Scholasticas Abbey

St Scholastica’s Abbey is a former Benedictine nunnery, now being converted into apartments. It was built in 1862 by George Goldie and is located on Dawlish Road, Teignmouth. The building is constructed of limestone rubble, with bands of red sandstone and cream freestone dressings, and has a slate roof with banded stone stacks of varying designs.

The architecture is Gothic Revival in style. The building is irregular in plan, measuring 46.6 metres wide at the front, with a rear left wing extending 38.4 metres. The south garden front, which is the most elaborate, has three and four storeys and a ten-window range. A full-width flight of steps rises from the garden to the front. Sash windows are present throughout, with shouldered arches to the second-floor windows at eaves level. The first-floor windows are flat-arched, and those on the south front are set within a colonnade of 17 pointed arches, alternating red and cream voussoirs, with windows in alternate arches. The ground-floor windows are similar, featuring two-light windows with segmental arches and red and cream voussoirs. The west front has a simpler design, with the chapel projecting to the right. The chapel's tower is octagonal, with gables to alternate facets, a belfry stage, and a spire with lucarnes above the forward-facing gable, all featuring pointed-arched windows. A lower two-storey service range, including a semi-basement, acts as the Priest's House. It has seven windows and a first-floor loading bay.

The apartment to the right of the centre of the garden front was formerly part of the cloister. The large, shared entrance hall features a trefoil-headed niche to the left and an open-well staircase with turned balusters and square newels. The former cloister retains panelled shutters and a continuous arch-braced roof. A small chapel on the ground floor includes an altar with cinquefoil niches, and a confessional. The main chapel, which was not inspected, is noted to have foliate carving to the apsed sanctuary, painted by Elphege Pippet of Hardman's. It was redecorated in 1962, with a reredos added in 1932. Original grisaille glass and altars by Hansom are also present.

St Scholastica’s Benedictine nunnery was originally founded in 1662 in Dunkirk, France. Following the French Revolution in 1793, the order relocated first to Hammersmith, and then to Teignmouth in 1863.