Lee Abbey, With Walls And Gateway

Lee Abbey, with Walls and Gateway

This is a house, now a residential centre for a Christian community, situated in Lynton and Lynmouth. The building represents a complex structure developed over more than a century, beginning in the mid-19th century with significant extensions added around 1920 and a new entrance tower constructed in 1968.

The original mid-19th-century core comprises a complex of buildings arranged around three sides of a large courtyard, with a prominent entrance porch to the north and a distinctive octagonal music room to the southwest. The structure is rendered with some exposed rubble stonework in the walls and gatehouse, and covered with tile roofs. In the 1920s, a new range including a dining room was extended to the south. In 1968, a new four-storey entrance tower in exposed textured concrete was added to the south of this range, designed by Scarlett, Burkett Associates.

The main ranges are principally three storeys, with a basement to the earliest section. Windows are generally two- or three-light casements with transoms, though many are late twentieth-century replacements. On the second floor, windows are typically contained within small face gables.

The south front is dominated by the octagonal music room, which features a crenellated parapet, and a lower square porch with a matching crenellated parapet beneath a wide four-centred arch. Set back to the right is a three-storey range from the original building, with the top windows set under face gables and bays divided by pilasters. The ground floor steps forward with a flat roof and crenellated parapet. A seven-bay range of 1920s construction extends to the right, copying details from the earlier section, with dividing and corner buttresses and a central two-storey porch to a crenellated parapet. The return gable includes a two-storey canted bay. Attached to the right is the 1968 tower with a further entrance beneath a projecting concrete canopy.

The west front, facing down to the bay, features a major three-storey hall range with a steep gabled roof rising to central and end chimney stacks with octagonal shafts. A slightly lower range connects to the music room, which displays pinnacled buttresses at each external angle. The music room has three tall three-light windows with flat four-centred heads to the lights and a transom band in tracery incorporating shields. Facing west is a blind panel backing the fireplace, and to the left are two smaller windows with similar tracery detail on the ground floor, with a four-centred doorway to the left between paired buttresses and under a hood.

The north front features a gabled two-storey porch to the right, with plank doors in a pointed arch, representing the original main entry to the first building. This backs against the high gable of the hall range. To its left is a five-bay range, including a lofty two-light staircase window with transom.

The courtyard has been partly filled by later building and is mainly enclosed across the east side by late nineteenth-century additions. At the junction between the east and south sides is a four-storey square tower, clearly visible in early views but now nearly concealed by later constructions.

Interior features of principal interest include the music room with adjacent staircase and loggia, and the main staircase in the north range. The music room displays a ceiling with eight timber ribs featuring multiple cusping and pierced spandrels, and a central castellated suspended boss with four shields, probably concealing ventilators. The ribs are carried on clustered Batty Langley-type colonnettes with capitals and bases continued as a skirting. The west wall contains a large stone fireplace with a four-centred opening and spandrels with finely carved leaf decoration, and paired diagonal pilasters to a floret frieze. The east side has a lofty glazed panel with two doors, matching the detail of the windows.

Adjacent to the music room is a straight-flight staircase with square newels and splat balusters to a plain string, passing through a four-centred arch with panelled intrados on corbels. The upper floor flights are arranged in an open octagon. From the north side of the music room, a Gothick doorway leads to a long gallery in three bays, possibly originally an open-fronted loggia, with three open arches on steps to the right, opposite the windows. The gallery has a compartmental ceiling with cusped diagonal ribs and drops, and a tiled floor of possibly reused medieval tiles. The inner room has a fireplace with a four-centred opening.

Beyond is a square salon with a nine-compartment ceiling featuring moulded ribs, and a fine decorative wood fire surround with a rich scrolled frieze on paired columns. The north range contains a fine large square open-well staircase with quarter-landings and a wrought-iron balustrade with Gothick detail to a swept handrail. The first and second floors have Batty Langley slender iron columns, beneath a four-compartment ceiling with moulded ribs. Treads are in stone with scrolled intrados. In the top floor of this wing, adjacent to the staircase, is a simple chapel with a collar roof in six bays. Many original six-panel doors with moulded architraves remain throughout the building. The basement comprises a series of segmental barrel vaults on thick walls, with a central cross passage.

The square gatehouse, of mid-19th-century construction, is in three storeys with corner buttresses, a string course, and plain coping. The entry arch is in moulded brick with a wide pointed arch, above which is a three-light casement with diamond panes in cast-iron. To the right is a boundary wall, containing a three-light casement, extending approximately 30 metres. The north archway is similar to the outer one, beneath a two-light casement, and the west-facing wall includes a blocked archway.

Connecting the gatehouse to the late twentieth-century tower is a very lofty rubble wall with square buttresses, arranged in four panels approximately 5 metres high and four-and-a-half panels approximately 7 metres high.

The site was originally owned by the Cistercians at Forde Abbey, but passed to Nicholas Wichehalse, a merchant from Barnstaple, in 1559. There was a farmhouse here, repaired in 1628. The property belonged to John Short in 1713 and John Knight in 1730. In 1841 it was purchased by the Bailey family, who remained in residence until 1921 when it became a hotel, at which time the main extensions were constructed. During the Second World War it became a boys' school, and in 1945 was acquired by the Christian Fellowship, which continues to run the property. The additions of 1968 received a Civic Trust award.