Listed Building record MDO705 - Cerne Abbey (formerly Abbey House) Abbey Street, Cerne Abbas

A private House, on site of, and incorporating parts of late medieval monastic gatehouse (front gate arch buttress, side entrance to porter's lodge), remainder burnt in the mid eighteenth century, and almost entirely rebuilt from the late eighteenth century onwards.

(ST 66530135). Abbey House sited from Auth 1 and OS 2500 1976). Abbey House is a private house on the site of and incorporating parts of a late Medieval monastic gatehouse. C15th fragment include a fron gate arch buttress and side entrance to the porter's lodge. The remainder was burnt down in the C18th and almost entirely rebuilt in the late C18th. <1-2>

<1> Royal Commission on Historical Monuments England, 1952, An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset, Volume I (West), 79 (Monograph). SDO97.

'(3) Abbey Farm, house N.W. of the detached churchyard, incorporates part of the abbey-buildings, but was burnt about the middle of the 18th century and largely reconstructed after that date, except for a wing of c. 1500 at the N.E. angle. The house is of two storeys with attics; the walls are of stone and flint in bands and the roofs are covered with stone slates. The S. wing with its S.E. buttress is probably partly of the 15th century and may have been part of the abbey gatehouse. The windows and the ashlar are mostly reused material from the earlier building, the windows being of three and four lights with labels. On the N. side are two blocked doorways with four-centred heads and the doorway in use is of the 16th century reset; it has moulded jambs and four-centred arch in a square head; just to the E. of it is the W. jamb and spring of an archway, now blocked. The N.E. wing has some 16th-century stone-mullioned windows and the modern doorway is set in a window of the same character. Inside the building the S.E. room has a reset 15th-century fireplace (Plate 46) from the so-called guesthouse; it has moulded jambs and square head above which is a band of quatre-foiled diagonal panels enclosing paterae and a monogram of I.V. with a doctor's cap (?), presumably for John Vanne, abbot, 1458–70; the fireplace is finished with a moulded cornice with carved paterae. In a gardenwall is a reset 15th-century doorway with moulded jambs and four-centred head.'

<2> Newman, J, and Pevsner, N, 1972, The Buildings of England: Dorset (Monograph). SWX1290.

<3> National Record of the Historic Environment, 1001622 (Digital archive). SDO14739.

Record last edited

Nov 18 2022 3:09PM