Mellifont Abbey, Boundary Walls And Gate Piers

A former rectory, now a residential home, dating principally from the mid- to late 18th century but with earlier origins. The house probably stands on or close to the site of the medieval rectory and is believed to incorporate parts of that building's fabric, as well as possible elements of the medieval church house. Much of the former pleasure ground to the south-west has been built over.

Construction

The building is constructed of lias stone rubble and brick with brick dressings and Doulting stone quoins, under lead and slate roofs with brick stacks.

Plan and Development

This is a multi-phase building of considerable complexity, comprising principally late-medieval and 18th-century ranges on an ancient site. The principal range, with its west-facing façade, probably incorporates 13th- to 17th-century material and was substantially extended in the 18th century when it was refashioned in the Gothick style. This range fronts an irregular conglomeration of ranges including a south-east wing of late 14th- or 15th-century date, considered to represent part of the former high-status rectory house. The current kitchen block to the rear is set at an oblique angle to the rest of the building and is probably 18th or 19th century. An 18th-century stair block also lies to the rear of the main range. Further alterations and additions were carried out in the early 19th century and the second half of the 20th century. The 20th-century additions are not of interest.

Exterior

West Front

The principal west range displays a Gothic Revival style and incorporates considerable 13th-, 14th- and 15th-century re-used freestone detail. It is of two storeys, arranged as four bays, then one, then three bays, with a crenellated and moulded parapet and brick stringcourses. The sash windows with exposed sash boxes are set in two-centred arched openings with brick surrounds and keys. Three of the windows are blank and infilled with brick. The left bay on the ground floor has 20th-century French windows with a laced Gothick fanlight. Above the heads of the first-floor windows are 13th-century medieval carved freestone busts and corbels of uncertain provenance.

The façade is dominated by a three-stage embattled central tower or porch constructed in a chequerboard pattern with alternating advancing and receding brickwork. It has diagonal buttresses and openings to each face of the ground floor with rusticated surrounds and carved heads as keys. The entrance doorway is in the Strawberry Hill Gothic style with a half-glazed door, sidelights and elaborate ogee-arched fanlight. The first floor of the tower features a re-used freestone oriel of four lights with leaded lights, a lower decorative frieze and an ornamental cornice. The third stage contains an arcade of late 13th-century medieval spandrel sections featuring mermaids and monkeys playing musical instruments, an 18th-century oculus, and two pedimented niches with brick surrounds.

The right return has an opening to the ground floor with a late 20th-century French door with a laced head surviving above, and tripartite-barred sash windows to the upper floor. The central window to the first floor is set within a pointed-arch opening. To the right is a canted bay of three storeys added in the 19th century, built of brick with a brick string and coping.

Other Elevations

The coursed stone rubble walling beyond to the east forms part of the south elevation of the south-east wing. It is lit by 18th- or 19th-century timber casements, including one whose opening has been reduced. The eastern end of this wing is obscured by a two-storey extension added in the 1980s, which is not of interest.

Attached to the east corner of the modern addition is a single-storey block, currently the kitchen, aligned north-west to south-east—a different alignment from the rest of the house. It has uncoursed stone rubble walls and is of two phases, with window and door openings of various styles and dates, including simple blocked brick arches in the west and south walls.

The battlemented parapet and stringcourse continue along the north side of the principal range. The north elevation includes a staircase block bay to the left-hand end lit by two 18th-century timber laced oculi in brick surrounds with leaded lights. A sash window has been inserted beneath the lower of the two. To the right, at first floor, is a window set within a two-centred arch surround of brick matching others on the west front, with a further oculus above.

Interior

The medieval south-east wing has a narrow footprint and has been sub-divided into bedrooms. A blocked lancet window in the north wall is only visible within the range. The roof has two arch-braced collared trusses, both open, with cambered collars that are chamfered. It comprises three bays, with the end bays truncated by an inserted stack at the east end and the stone rubble rear wall of the main range to the west.

The roof of the current kitchen block to the north-east, bounding the present churchyard, includes two re-used smoke-blackened trusses, probably re-used from a high-status building.

The house retains fittings of high quality, including rich decorative plasterwork in a number of rooms. The entrance hall in the west front has a shaped ceiling and cornice with egg-and-dart decoration and a pendant frieze, and Gothick door cases with applied cherub faces and crocketed pinnacles to the jambs. The panelled doors leading off the hallway and the soffits of the arched windows in the two ground-floor reception rooms also feature fine cusped motifs. The dado rail, cornice and ceiling decoration in the dining room are particularly finely detailed with Gothic arcading and cusping. Unfortunately original fireplaces do not survive in the reception rooms.

The principal stairway has a ramped handrail and encompasses chinoiserie in the form of fretwork balustrading and a matching fretwork frieze at the top of the staircase. The vaulted ceiling above is lit by an octagonal lantern with applied decoration to the panels. A lift has been inserted within the stairwell.

The quality of the fittings in several first-floor rooms in the front range, including several Gothick door surrounds and a decorative cornice hidden above a suspended ceiling, suggests that these rooms were originally a large drawing room, since sub-divided, and an antechamber. A further fine doorcase with cusped pinnacles survives beyond. Other panelled doors are covered with flush fireproof boards. Most of the other upstairs rooms have plain cornicing or no decoration.

Some of the plasterwork detailing appears to date from the early to mid-19th century and contrasts with other plasterwork stylistically attributed to the mid- to late 18th century. Examples of the later work probably include the cherub's heads, which appear to be applied to the doorframes in the hallway, and possibly some of the Gothic-arched motifs at the top of the stairway.

At the north end of the range is a plainer rear staircase. The attic floor retains some plank doors with L-shaped and strap hinges respectively. The accessible attic bays at the north end of the principal range have exposed queen post trusses with lead flats, possibly replacing a ridged roof.

Subsidiary Features

The house is bounded on three sides by contemporary and later high stone rubble and brick walls and is approached via a pair of 20th-century wrought-iron gates on earlier gate piers with brick lacings and moulded caps. There is a Gothick doorway with brick jambs and a plank door in the east boundary wall, providing access into the churchyard.

History

From at least the 11th century until the Reformation, the manor of Wookey was held by the Bishops of Wells, and an episcopal manor house (the Grade II* listed Court Farm) was built adjacent to Mellifont Abbey in the 13th century. An ecclesiastical peculiar—outside the jurisdiction of the bishop of the diocese—was created at Wookey in the form of rectorial lands, initially for the dean of Wells and then re-assigned to the sub-dean of the Cathedral for the upkeep of his post. Unlike the rest of the Episcopal manor, this arrangement pertained until 1847. The sub-deans were also the rectors of St Matthew's Church in the village, and a rectory house, parts of which survive within Mellifont Abbey, was built to the north-west of the church.

In 1548 the rectory house was leased to the Godwyn family. A terrier of 1634 described it as containing "a hall, a parlour, a kitchen, a buttery, a scullery, a pantry, and a brewhouse, with chambers over them one storey high". The rectory also had a house in the churchyard, containing "a hall a kitchen and a loft over that under one ruffe" according to a 1557 survey of the manor. It is likely that this building became known as the old church house and was subsequently incorporated into the main fabric of the rectory house as appurtenances to Mellifont Abbey.

The rectory was extended substantially in the 18th century as a country house when it was leased to the Piers family, who, like the Godwyns before them, had held high posts in the diocese. The house was refashioned in a medieval Gothick idiom. William Ekins Piers, son of William Piers, the Member of Parliament for Wells (who was also included in the lease), inherited the lease to the rectory house from his uncle Thomas Piers in 1753, and the lease to the adjacent manor house in 1758. Following his death in 1765 these interests were passed to his sister Lady Elizabeth Montague Bertie.

Recent documentary research in 2010 into the history of Mellifont Abbey has sought to demonstrate that the Gothic Revival work was carried out in two phases: circa 1753-65 and during the 1770s. A description of the house in 1783 as a "late new-built MANSION-HOUSE at Wookey" may imply that a great deal of rebuilding and improvement had recently taken place. Furthermore, an analysis of the building's fabric suggests that the lower two storeys of the tower and the restyling of the façade of the principal range were not carried out at the same date, and that the third storey of the tower may have been added in conjunction with the restyling of the façade. A sequence of contrasting walling materials at high level in the southern part of the rear (east) elevation of the principal range may possibly represent further evidence for two phases of 18th-century aggrandisement, although the Reverend William Phelps, writing from Mellifont Abbey in 1836, was of the opinion that the 18th-century aggrandisement dated from circa 1730.

A pleasure ground was laid out to the south-west by 1794. Shortly after this date, in circa 1800, the house was re-named Mellifont Abbey, possibly after the abbey of the same name in County Louth, Ireland.

For much of the 19th and 20th centuries the rectory house was leased to various individuals including, from 1817 to 1824, the Reverend William Phelps who undertook cosmetic improvements to the reception areas and added some accommodation. Shortly after the Second World War the house was converted to a residential nursing home.

Significance

Mellifont Abbey illustrates a history dating back to at least the 14th century. The surviving medieval elements and the 18th-century work, which is a skilful example of the Gothick style, combine to create a synthesis of different periods. The 18th-century remodelling is of particular architectural interest: the idiosyncratic, exuberant façade of the principal range is a notable and well-preserved example of 18th-century gentrification in the Gothick style, possessing its own character as a fashionable re-working of an earlier dwelling.

The principal rooms are richly adorned with mid- to late 18th-century and early 19th-century decorative plasterwork, doors and door furniture of particularly high-quality craftsmanship. The medieval architectural fragments incorporated in the tower are especially fine, and some, particularly the spandrels, are of more than special interest in the corpus of 13th-century English sculpture.

The building is one of the key structures, along with the Grade I listed church and the Grade II* Court Farm, that reflects the importance of Wookey as a settlement from the Anglo-Saxon period onwards.