Valle Crucis Abbey

The early work on the church is of uncoursed dolerite with Cefn freestone and gritstone quoining, the later work generally of Carboniferous limestone ashlar work. The buildings are now roofless, except for a slate roof on the E claustral range. The structures that survive consist of the chancel walls and the W front of the church, the S transept and the E range of the cloister including the chapter house and sacristry, and the lower part of the reredorter. Of the remainder only the lowest parts of the walls survive, and are now laid out as a monument in care. The chancel has a remarkable articulated E wall, with 2 stages of lancets between pilaster buttresses, which rise and are joined as arches in the gable. The nave is of 5 bays, with transepts and E chapels. The W front has a moulded round-headed W door of 3 orders, and above three 2-light windows under an encompassing arch. An 8-light cusped rose window is set high in the gable, above which is an inscription recording the building by Adam, abbott 1330-1344. Of the E claustral range the chapter house, approximately square in plan, has three 3-light reticulated E windows between buttresses, with small windows above, lighting the dorter. The sacristry is, unusually, extended to the full length of the aisled S transept and has small windows to an upper chamber developed in the late C15 as the Abbot's camera, with access by stair to a chamber over the E aisle of the transept. Towards the cloister, the outer wall of the chapter house has a fine 3-light Curvilinear window interpreted as a book cupboard, a round-headed arch to the sacristry, and a pointed arch to the slype. A range of small windows above the former lean-to roof light the former cubiculae in the dorter.

The chancel has triple wall shafts probably intended to carry a vault. It was later extended W towards a pulpitum placed in the nave in the late C14 or early C15, largely cutting off the transepts, each of which has two altars in the E aisle. The sacristry opens off the S transept and is barrel vaulted. The C14 chapter house vaults are supported on 4 columns, the filleted wave mouldings running without interruption into the quadripartite vault. The dorter has small trefoil-headed windows with equal splayed reveals to the cubiculae and a fireplace on the E wall. The Abbot's lodging over the sacristry was converted to a dwelling after the Dissolution and has an inserted fireplace with a C13 grave slab reused as a lintel. The dog-toothed base of the pulpit stair in the frater survives.