Flaxley Abbey

Flaxley Abbey

This Grade I listed building is a house of complex origin, combining remains of a Cistercian monastery founded in the mid-12th century by the Earl of Hereford with substantial later additions. The principal periods of construction span from the late 12th century through to the 19th century, with major work undertaken between 1777 and 1783 by architect A. Keck for Sir Thomas Crawley-Boevey following a fire in 1777 that destroyed the north end of the west range.

The building is arranged in a large 'L' plan, with a two-storey entrance block to the south (5 bays by 3 bays) projecting from a longer wing behind, at right angles to which extends another long wing to the left. The longer wing rises to two storeys with attics. The main facades are rendered in rough dark render lined in white to represent wide-jointed ashlar for walling, with pale render to represent fine-jointed ashlar for dressings; elsewhere the building is of exposed brick, with tiled roofs throughout.

The entrance front, designed by Keck, features an ashlar plinth with a plain string course to the first floor, moulded to the eaves and topped with crenellations. Square piers at the corners are carried up above the roofline and capped with pyramids. At the centre sits a shaped gable containing a large sundial in a Gothic surround, with an urn finial above and a hipped roof. The windows are sashes with hoodmoulds. The central ashlar porch displays crocketed ogee-headed arches on each face, square corner piers, and crenellations above; corner finials were added in the 1960s. A panelled front door with fanlight sits beneath. The returns to either side are three windows wide, matching the front in character. On the right is a lower two-storey wing, set back and three sashes wide, crenellated with a bowed end facing east.

To the left stands the south wall of the Abbot's Guest Hall, a two-storey crenellated structure with no string course at first floor level. Two dummy windows on the ground floor are painted; above them are four slits and a three-light mullion-and-transom window in stone, inserted after 1913.

The west face features a recessed centre between gables. The ground floor of the centre section contains five round-headed windows between ashlar buttresses, two in each gable (the right-hand one blind), all with hoodmoulds, mullions, transoms, and iron casements. The first floor has four flat-headed windows with cyma-moulded timber tracery forming a variation on the Venetian window type, with original double iron casements. Above these are crenellations and four hipped dormers; rainwater heads are dated 1751. Chimneys have plain bases; one on the right is a plain stalk, whilst the centre and left examples are diamond-set brick stalks. The right-hand gable contains a three-light window with reticulated tracery, inserted in 1913, above a bishop's mitre and gable cross. The left gable has a flat-headed three-light window with trefoil heads in timber and iron casements, above which sits a roundel with a quatrefoil moulded in coloured render and an iron weather vane on the apex. A single-storey wing in the rear courtyard dates from the 1960s.

The interior of the entrance hall features three original blind arches on each side set on pilasters, with a moulded plaster cornice framing a similar arch in the stair hall beyond. Original doors and doorcases open onto rooms on either side; the room on the right retains an original Adam-style fireplace. The staircase has three turned balusters per tread and fluted newels.

The ground-floor room in the recessed part of the west facade is a late 12th-century five-bay undercroft with quadripartite stone vaulting, the ribs rising from shield-shaped bosses, with plastered walls. In the second bay on the right, an early 18th-century eight-panel door leads into the courtyard and is externally framed by a stone bolection-moulded surround with pulvinated frieze. The fifth bay on the right contains a blocked round-headed window. The fourth bay contains a pointed-arched doorway with keel-moulded nook shafts on the outside, leading to 17th-century stairs in a projecting brick wing. These stairs feature a pulvinated string, heavy turned balusters, square panelled newels with ball finials, and a heavy moulded handrail.

The Abbot's Guest Hall, of 14th-century date, occupies the first floor at the south end of the wing. It is three-and-a-half bays wide with an archbraced collar roof, the braces rising from crenellated timber corbels set below the wallplate with half trusses between. Two pairs of purlins feature cusped windbraces to each; a crenellated timber cornice with hollow moulding below completes the roof structure.

From the monastery, only part of the south wall of the nave survives, now incorporated into the Orangery. The fire of 1777 destroyed the north end of the west range, which was partially rebuilt to a different plan, with the entrance wing added to the south thereafter. The house was the home of Mrs. C. Boevey, who was the original of the 'Perverse Widow' in Addison's Sir Roger de Coverley papers.