Hartland Abbey

Hartland Abbey is a private country house originally built as an Augustinian abbey. It was founded around 1175 as a refoundation of the much older religious community dedicated to St Nectan. At the Dissolution of the Monasteries, the abbey was granted in 1546 to William Abbot, Sergeant to the King's Cellar. Since then, the house has descended without sale to the present owner, Lady Stuckley.

The building as it stands incorporates some 14th-century and 15th-century work in the basement, and parts of its fabric are no doubt medieval and 16th-century to 17th-century, particularly the north-west range. A range of around 1705 was built by Paul Orchard, and a major rebuilding took place in 1779, initiated by the second Paul Orchard under the direction of the London surveyor John Meadows. In the 19th century, two further remodellings were undertaken by Sir George Stuckley around 1845 and in 1862, the latter by Sir George Gilbert Scott.

The walls are of random and coursed stone rubble, rendered in places at the rear, with bath stone and sandstone dressings. The roof is natural slate, mainly hipped. There are numerous stone rubble stacks, all apparently late 18th-century and 19th-century.

Plan and Development

The confines of this report do not allow for a full discussion of the original plan of the abbey — Richard Haslam in his Country Life article and R Pearse Chope in The Book of Hartland give a fuller analysis. The present building, however, occupies the site of and probably to some extent incorporates the western range of the abbey, the abbot's lodging. Various 18th-century drawings illustrate the gradual remodelling which took place prior to 1779.

The forerunner of the major late 18th-century remodelling was the addition by Paul Orchard in the first years of the 18th century of an L-shaped block at the south-west end of the building. According to Richard Haslam, when the second Paul Orchard (1739–1812) inherited the abbey, it was a rambling building consisting of bedrooms in the medieval north wing connected through the two main rooms — the abbot's chamber and hall, which were built over the west cloister — to the Queen Anne wing at the south. The house then spread eastwards with a gallery above the south cloister.

The major remodelling undertaken by Paul Orchard involved the demolition of the parts extending to the east along the valley and enclosing the remaining medieval building by constructing a corridor on each floor along the west side, bypassing the main three first-floor rooms and linking the new row of bedrooms on the floor above this medieval range. The spirit of the remodelling was very much the Gothick of Batty Langley.

No major alterations then took place until 1845, when Sir George Stuckley redecorated the three principal front rooms in a style very similar to the interior of the Palace of Westminster. In 1862, Scott supervised alterations to the plan comprising the conversion of the central entrance hall to a billiard room and the building of a new outer hall at the north end of the house, which leads diagonally into an inner hall, beyond which is a staircase hall and the long main corridor. The service courtyard to the south of the house appears also to be 19th-century, although it may replace earlier buildings. Since the 19th century, the house has remained largely unaltered.

Exterior

The building has three storeys with basement. The eastern elevation is composed of the 1779 new Gothick front of three bays with embattled parapet and central pediment breaking forward slightly. There are large buttresses with offsets at each end, and a flat band divides the principal floors. The top-floor windows, arranged 3:3:3, are hornless sashes with narrow glazing bars and intersecting tracery in the head in late 18th-century two-centred arched openings. On the piano nobile floor below is a large mid-19th-century bay at the centre of each of the outer bays. Both are crenellated and with mullion and transom windows, the left-hand one rectangular whereas the right-hand one is canted. To either side of them are 19th-century two-light mullion and transom windows. The three windows of the central bay are in openings with two-centred arched heads with recessed surrounds — the two outer ones are similar sashes to the floor above but taller, while the central one, formerly a doorway, has a 19th-century traceried head and two-light wooden mullion window below.

Extending along the lower ground floor level is a row of fine sandstone arches with trefoiled heads and circular columns, reputed to be reused from the abbey cloisters but in suspiciously good condition and corresponding to the fine sandstone dressings of the 18th-century and 19th-century work. At the left end of the principal front is a small two-storey range, also embattled, with a corresponding arched head window on each floor. A lower L-shaped service range extends to its left and returns to the rear around the service courtyard.

At the right-hand end of the principal front is George Gilbert Scott's embattled single-storey porch with Gothick arched doorway and stone mullion and transomed window in the right-hand wall, with a corbelled chimney stack adjoining it.

The western elevation of the house is roughly symmetrical and comprises a central recessed four-window section of three storeys with a projecting range of the same height at either end — the left-hand one slightly larger. Projecting again from each of these and extending beyond to each end is a two-storey plus attic four-window wing. All ranges apart from the outer wing to the left have embattled parapets. The central section has around late 19th-century four-pane sashes on its second floor. Below are probably late 18th-century sashes with traceried heads but in square openings. On the ground floor are similar trefoiled arches to those on the east front. These extend around the inner face of the two projecting ranges adjoining, each with an 18th-century or 19th-century stone arched doorway adjoining.

Of the two outer wings, the right-hand one is the early 18th-century addition of the first Paul Orchard. It has a canted full-height bay to the left of centre. On its first floor are around late 19th-century four-pane sashes, and below are sashes with traceried heads in square openings. The left-hand wing has a similar arrangement of windows but with 19th-century stone mullion windows on the ground floor.

The southern elevation of the house faces the service courtyard with an irregular facade incorporating four early 18th-century window openings which have moulded sandstone architraves with projecting keystones. Late 19th-century four-pane sashes are inserted. There is a large, probably later 18th-century arched stairlight with traceried head. The service range extends around two sides of the courtyard and has wide open arches on the ground floor and casement windows above with gables over. The wing returning to the west is probably later, and a late 18th-century or 19th-century crenellated stone rubble wall extends along the west side, enclosing the courtyard.

Interior

The fine interior is fairly comprehensively described by Richard Haslam in Country Life. Fragments of the medieval abbey survive in the basement in the form of arched doorways and the springing, possibly for a cloister arch.

The early 18th-century range is fairly complete, retaining its good open-string staircase with ramped handrail, square panelled newels and barleytwist balusters. There is also some good bolection-moulded panelling in two rooms and a contemporary bolection-moulded chimneypiece with basket grate. Another has an eared architrave and decorative frieze. A small lobby is also panelled and has a contemporary plaster ceiling of delicate foliage and well-modelled flower and fruit swag.

The library is the only room which preserves its late 18th-century decoration scheme of arcaded panelling and chimneypiece with depressed ogee arch. The inner hall of 1862 and the dining room reuse Elizabethan arcaded panelling which has been painted and gilded.

The three principal rooms, flamboyantly decorated in 1845, have much heavy wood carving in the form of doorcases and chimneypieces, largely in the Jacobean style, although the drawing room has earlier-style linenfold panelling. The ceilings are of intersecting moulded beams with carved bosses and decorated panels. The central room fireplace is made from Maltese stone. The drawing room has a frieze of painted panels depicting episodes of the Stucley family history.

The main passageway was decorated by Scott with low cross-vaulting which has stencil decoration.

Hartland Abbey has a long and fascinating history, and each of its main building phases is represented to a varying degree with some very good quality interior features and an imposing late 18th-century facade.