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Buckland Abbey is a Grade I listed [1] 700-year-old house in Buckland Monachorum, near Yelverton, Devon, England, noted for its connection with Sir Richard Grenville the Younger and Sir Francis Drake. It is owned by the National Trust.
Buckland Abbey was founded as a Cistercian abbey in 1278 [2] by Amicia, Countess of Devon and was a daughter house of Quarr Abbey, on the Isle of Wight. It was one of the last Cistercian houses founded in England and also the most westerly. The remains of the church are about 37.6 metres (123 ft) long. The width across the transepts is 28 metres (92 ft). The nave and presbytery is 10.1 metres (33 ft) wide.
The Exeter diocese episcopal registers show the abbey managed five granges at Buckland plus the home farm at the abbey. A market and fair at Buckland and Cullompton were granted in 1318. In 1337 King Edward III granted the monks a licence to crenellate.
In the 15th century the monks built a Tithe Barn which is 180 feet (55 m) long and survives to this day. It is Grade I listed [3]
It remained an abbey until the Dissolution of the Monasteries by King Henry VIII. At this time the revenues were placed at £241 17s. 9d. per annum [4] (equivalent to £172,700in 2021). [5] The Abbot was given a yearly pension of £60 (equivalent to £42,800in 2021), [5] and the remaining 12 monks shared £54 10s. 6d.
In 1541 Henry sold Buckland to Sir Richard Grenville the Elder (Sewer of the Chamber to Henry VIII, poet, soldier, last Earl Marshal of Calais) who, working with his son Sir Roger Grenville (Gentleman of the Privy Chamber of Henry VIII, captain of the ill-fated Mary Rose ), began to convert the abbey into a residence, renaming it Buckland Greynvile or Grenville. Sir Roger died in 1545 when the Mary Rose heeled over in a sudden squall while the English fleet was engaged with the French fleet in the English Channel off Portsmouth. He left a son aged 3, also named Richard Grenville, who completed the conversion in 1575–76.
After being owned by the family for 40 years, Buckland Greynvile was sold by Sir Richard the younger to two intermediaries in 1581, who unknown to Grenville, were working for Drake, whom he despised.
The abbey is unusual in that the church was retained as the principal component of the new house whilst most of the remainder was demolished, which was a reversal of the normal outcome with this type of redevelopment.
Drake lived in the house for 15 years, as did many of his collateral descendants including the Dowager Lady Seaton, born Elisabeth Fuller-Elliot-Drake, who died on 9 May 1937. [7] She left a life interest to Captain Richard Owen Tapps Gervis Meyrick. [8] In 1946 he sold it to Captain Arthur Rodd, [9] who presented the property to the National Trust in 1947. [10]
Following a restoration between 1948 and 1951 which cost around £20,000 (equivalent to £670,000in 2021), [5] largely funded by the Pilgrim Trust [11] the property has been open to the public since 1951 and is operated by the National Trust with the assistance of Plymouth City Council — the Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery use the building to house part of their collection. The collection is noted for the presence of "Drake's Drum". A number of independent craft workshops are located in the converted ox sheds. The Cider House garden includes both a wild garden and a kitchen garden. There is also a medieval Great Barn next to the house. [12]
In March 2013 the portrait of a man wearing a white feathered bonnet was re-attributed to Rembrandt by the Rembrandt expert Ernst van de Wetering. In June 2014, after eight months of work at the Hamilton Kerr Institute, the painting's authenticity was confirmed and its value estimated at £30m. [13]
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The National Trust Costume Group operate at Buckland Abbey, creating authentic Elizabethan costumes using traditional materials and methods. There is a complete Francis Drake costume, based on the famous portrait of Drake in the National Gallery, and the group are currently working on a costume for Lady Drake, also based on a portrait.
Sir Richard Grenville, also spelt Greynvile, Greeneville, and Greenfield, was an English privateer and explorer. Grenville was lord of the manors of Stowe, Cornwall and Bideford, Devon. He subsequently participated in the plantations of Ireland specifically the Munster plantations, the English colonisation of the Americas and the repulse of the Spanish Armada.
Tavistock is an ancient stannary and market town within West Devon, England. It is situated on the River Tavy from which its name derives. At the 2011 census the three electoral wards had a population of 13,028. It traces its recorded history back to at least 961 when Tavistock Abbey, whose ruins lie in the centre of the town, was founded. Its most famous son is Sir Francis Drake.
Buckland Monachorum is a village and civil parish in the West Devon district of Devon, England, situated on the River Tavy, about 10 miles north of Plymouth.
Drake's Drum is a snare drum that Sir Francis Drake took with him when he circumnavigated the world. Shortly before he died he ordered the drum to be taken to Buckland Abbey and vowed that if England were ever in danger and someone was to beat the drum he would return to defend the country. According to legend it can be heard to beat at times when England is at war or significant national events take place.
Great Coxwell Barn is a Medieval tithe barn at Great Coxwell, Oxfordshire, England. It is on the northern edge of the village of Great Coxwell, which is about 9 miles (14 km) northeast of Swindon in neighbouring Wiltshire.
Meavy is a small village, civil parish and former manor in the English county of Devon. Meavy forms part of the district of West Devon. It lies a mile or so east of Yelverton. The River Meavy runs near the village. For administrative purposes the parish is grouped with the parishes of Sheepstor and Walkhampton to form Burrator Parish Council, and for electoral purposes it is grouped with the same two parishes to form Burrator Ward.
Werrington is a civil parish and former manor now in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. Prior to boundary changes it straddled the Tamar and lay within the county of Devon. The portion on the west side was transferred to Cornwall by the abolition of Broadwoodwidger Rural District by the Local Government Commission for England in 1966. It is situated 1 mile (1.6 km) to the west of the Tamar, the traditional boundary between Devon and Cornwall, and 1 mile (1.6 km) north of Launceston.
There have been four baronetcies created for people with the surname Drake, three in the Baronetage of England and one in the Baronetage of Great Britain.
Sir Henry Pollexfen of Nutwell in the parish of Woodbury, Devon, was Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas.
The Fuller-Eliott-Drake Baronetcy, of Nutwell Court, Buckland Abbey, or Monachorum, Sherford, and Yarcombe in the County of Devon, was a title in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom. It was created on 22 August 1821 for the soldier Thomas Fuller-Eliott-Drake, with remainder in default of male issue of his own to his next two younger brothers, William Stephen Fuller and Rose Henry Fuller, and their male issue. Born Thomas Fuller, he was a grandson of George Augustus Eliott, 1st Baron Heathfield, and grand-nephew of the last Drake Baronet of Buckland, and adopted the additional surnames of Eliott and Drake upon his inheritance of Buckland Abbey and Nutwell Court from the second Lord Heathfield in 1813. He was succeeded according to the special remainder by his nephew, the second Baronet, a son of the younger of his two brothers, who had also adopted the additional surnames. The title became extinct upon his death without a male heir in 1916. The second Baronet's only child married the third Baron Seaton, who also adopted the Eliott and Drake surnames.
Sir William Elford, 1st Baronet was an English banker, politician, and amateur artist.
Sir Francis Drake, 1st Baronet was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons in two parliaments between 1625 and 1629.
Sir William Strode (1562–1637) of Newnham in the parish of Plympton St Mary, Devon, England, was a member of the Devon landed gentry, a military engineer and seven times a Member of Parliament elected for Devon in 1597 and 1624, for Plympton Erle in 1601, 1604, 1621 and 1625, and for Plymouth in 1614. He was High Sheriff of Devon from 1593 to 1594 and was knighted in 1598. In 1599 he was appointed Deputy Lieutenant of Devon. There is a monument to him in the parish church of Plympton St Mary.
Sir Francis Drake, 3rd Baronet (1642–1718), of Buckland Abbey in the parish of Buckland Monachorum and of Meavy, both in Devon, England, was elected seven times as a Member of Parliament for Tavistock in Devon, in 1673, 1679, 1681, 1689, 1690, 1696 and 1698.
Self-portrait wearing a white feathered bonnet is an oil painting attributed to the Dutch painter Rembrandt. It is signed and dated 1635. It was traditionally regarded as a Rembrandt self-portrait until 1968, when it was rejected on stylistic grounds in the Rembrandt catalogue raisonné by Horst Gerson. In 2013, art historian Ernst van de Wetering re-attributed the painting as an original Rembrandt. It is one of over 40 painted self-portraits by Rembrandt.
Nutwell in the parish of Woodbury on the south coast of Devon is a historic manor and the site of a Georgian neo-classical Grade II* listed mansion house known as Nutwell Court. The house is situated on the east bank of the estuary of the River Exe, on low-lying ground nearly contiguous to the water, and almost facing Powderham Castle similarly sited on the west bank. The manor was long held by the powerful Dynham family, which also held adjacent Lympstone, and was according to Risdon the site of their castle until John Dynham, 1st Baron Dynham (1433–1501), the last in the male line, converted it into "a fair and stately dwelling house".
Ash in the parish of Musbury in the county of Devon is an historic estate, long the residence of the ancient Drake family, the heir of which remarkably was always called John, only one excepted, for ten generations. It was formerly believed to have been the birthplace of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough (1650–1722), whose mother was Elizabeth Drake, but was in fact probably in ruins at the time of his birth. The future Duke was however baptised in 1650 in the Chapel at Ash, which had been licensed by the Bishop of Exeter in 1387. Ash was "burnt and demolished" during the Civil War and "lay long in ruins" during which time the family moved one mile away to Trill, Axminster. John Drake (1625–1669), the wartime occupant who had suffered so greatly for the Royalist cause received some recompense at the end of the troubles by being created a baronet by King Charles II on the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660. Ash was rebuilt "to a greater perfection than it was of before" by Sir John Drake, 2nd Baronet (1647–1684). The last in the male line was Sir William Drake, 6th Baronet, who died without children and bequeathed all his estates to his widow Anne Williams, who remarried to George Speke, MP, and had by him a daughter Anne Speke, who brought the Drake estates, including Ash and the advowson of Musbury, to her husband Frederick North, 2nd Earl of Guilford (1732–1792), who sold them piece-meal to various persons. Ash House survives today as a grade II* listed private residence in much the same form as depicted by Swete in 1795.
Sherford is a village and former civil parish and manor, now in the parish of Frogmore and Sherford, in the South Hams district, in the county of Devon, England. It is situated about 2 1/2 miles east of the town of Kingsbridge. It should not be confused with the new town Sherford to be built on the outskirts of Plymouth, about 18 miles to the north-west. The parish church is dedicated to Saint Martin of Tours. In 1961 the parish had a population of 258. On 1 April 1986 the parish was abolished and merged with parts of South Pool and Charleton to form "Frogmore and Sherford". Sherford was recorded in the Domesday Book as Sireford/Sirefort/Sireforda.
St Andrew's Church, Buckland Monachorum is a Grade I listed parish church in the Church of England Diocese of Exeter in Buckland Monachorum, Devon.
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