Warden Abbey
| Warden Abbey | |
|
Landmark Trust | |
|---|---|
.jpg)
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| Grid reference: | TL12064384 |
| Location: | 52°4’54"N, 0°21’58"W |
| Built 1560 | |
| Information | |
| Owned by: | Landmark Trust |
Warden Abbey is the remains of a house in Old Warden in Bedfordshire. Built on the site of the original Warden Abbey or Wardon Abbey, which was one of the senior Cistercian houses of England in the Middle Ages, founded about 1135 from Rievaulx Abbey. The remaining building is a Grade I listed building.[1]
The house of today was built in 1560 for Robert Gostwick. Today it is in the care of the Landmark Trust.
History
The Abbey
The Abbey Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Old Warden was founded by Walter Espec, who had founded the mother house, Rievaulx Abbey, and settled the new community on one of his inherited estates, on unprofitable wasteland, as its early name, 'St Mary de Sartis', implied:[2] this was just the kind of remote, uninhabited sites specified by the founders of the Cistercian order. The first abbot, Simon, was a pupil of Aelred, Abbot of Rievaulx. The success of the abbey may be inferred from the foundation of a daughter house, Sibton Abbey, Suffolk, as soon as 1150.[3]
The village of Old Warden, Bedfordshire grew up under the Abbey's protection. Great accumulated Cistercian wealth enabled Wardon Abbey to be rebuilt on a grand scale in the early fourteenth century, with complex tiling in carpet-patterns and pictorial vignettes pieced together in shaped tiles that approached a boldly scaled mosaic.[4] Gilding of the carved details was so lavishly laid on that in 1848, after demolition and burial, recovered fragments retained their brightness.[5] By 1252 the monks had more land under cultivation than they could work by their own labour in the early Cistercian way: nineteen granges were recorded in that year.
From the orchards at Wardon came the Warden pear, rated the best of pears, and so distinctive that a pie made from them was a "wardon pie": Shakespeare refers to these in The Winter's tale: "I must have Saffron to colour the Warden Pies"[6] In Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books a recipe is given (p. 51) for "Quyncis or Wardouns in past".[7]
The abbey declined after the Black Death.
Dissolution and modernity
It was dissolved in 1537 under Henry VIII, and the estate was sold for £389 16s 6d. The new owner demolished most of the buildings in 1552 to sell the materials, and then built a new red brick mansion, bearing the name Warden Abbey House.
In 1790, most of this Tudor house was pulled down by its owners, the Whitbreads of nearby Southill, leaving only a north-east wing, which still stands today.
The Landmark Trust rescued the building from dereliction in 1974 and renovated it in exchange for a long lease; it can now be rented for holidays.
Outside links
- Warden Abbey: The Landmark Trust
References
- ↑ National Heritage List 1222165: Warden Abbey (Grade I listing)
- ↑ Evelyn Baker, "Images, Ceramic Floors and Warden Abbey" World Archaeology 18.3, Archaeology and the Christian Church (February 1987:363-381).
- ↑ Documented in Sibton Abbey Cartularies and Charters i-iv, (Woodbridge: Suffolk Records Society) 1985-88, especially the Introduction, pt i.
- ↑ "pseudo-mosaic" in Baker 1987:365; Baker discusses remnants of richly stamped and incised tile floors of the abbey church and the abbot's lodgings or infirmary, close in style to the nearly intact paving in Prior Craudon's Chapel at Ely, 1324-25.
- ↑ Noted in Baker 1987:379.
- ↑ The Winter's Tale iv.3
- ↑ 'Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books', edited by Thomas Austin (Early English Text Society; Original Series, Volume 91)