Buckfast Abbey, Main Block

Buckfast Abbey, Main Block

Abbey complex at Buckfastleigh, including the probably 14th-century Abbot's Tower, a circa 1800 mansion built for Samuel Berry that incorporates a medieval vaulted undercroft, and a building programme begun in 1883 to designs by FA Walters for the Benedictine monks who purchased the site.

The buildings are constructed in local grey limestone rubble with some Bathstone and Ham Hill stone dressings, and slate roofs. Walters' designs follow a simplified Romanesque style, "no doubt influenced by the history of the site" according to Pevsner. The building programme begun in 1883 largely followed the site of the medieval cloister, incorporating the Berry house with its undercroft, the Abbot's Tower, and an 1882 church (now the chapter house) into a courtyard range. The 1882 church preceded Walters' rebuilding of the abbey church, largely on the foundations of the medieval abbey church. The Abbot's Tower stands at the south end of the west range with Berry's house at the north end; the church is positioned south of and projects forward from the Abbot's Tower. The north and east ranges follow Walters' designs.

The Abbot's Tower is three storeys tall with an octagonal stair turret at its south-west corner. Set-back buttresses rise to a parapet above a moulded string course. The west and north faces have two-light stone mullioned windows, with upper windows featuring flamboyant tracery.

Berry House, partly concealed by Walters' building, is a three-storey circa 1800 building that reused medieval masonry. Originally castellated, its entrance with octagonal corner towers and a central projecting bay containing a two-light transomed mullioned window remains visible above the single-storey gabled entrance block of the Walters phase.

The church features a blocked ground-floor doorway at its west end, a three-light west window with intersecting cusped tracery, and lancet windows to the sides.

The claustral buildings show consistent architectural treatment. The west elevation, the most prominent, presents a seven-bay Romanesque-style front with bays divided by pilasters and corbelled eaves. The ground floor contains round-headed windows with recessed architraves, glazed with square leaded panes, and a round-headed doorway in the second bay from the north with a double chamfered arch. A battered string at first-floor level rises as a gable above the door, which is carved with "pax", the motto of the Benedictines. First-floor windows sit within large round-headed recesses, mostly paired and round-headed, glazed with square leaded panes, with blind round-headed tympana also paired to each bay. The north and east claustral ranges follow the same style.

The interior includes a plain medieval vaulted undercroft below Berry House, with access from the abbey church. Classical fireplaces are noted in Berry House. The Grade II* listing reflects the importance of the medieval buildings incorporated in this complex and the significance of the whole site.