The Abbey in Sutton Courtenay is a medieval courtyard house in the English county of Oxfordshire (formerly Berkshire). It is located in the Vale of White Horse near the River Thames, across the road from the twelfth-century Norman Hall and the Manor House. The Abbey has been recognised as a building of outstanding historic and architectural interest and is considered to be a 'textbook' example of an English medieval manor house. It has been a Grade I-listed building since 1952.
The Abbey has its origins in the thirteenth century as a rectory of Abingdon Abbey, a Benedictine monastery up north in Abingdon-on-Thames. Several construction phases took place during the Middle Ages, carried out by prominent figures like Solomon of Rochester, Thomas Beckington and William Say, but it was not until the seventeenth century that the current plan was completed. It was probably during the Victorian era that the house obtained the name 'The Abbey'. From 1495 to 1867, The Abbey was in possession of St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle, who leased the estate among others to John Fettiplace.
After being inhabited by Eve Fleming, the estate was bought by David Astor in 1958, who leased it to the Ockenden Venture which offered sanctuary to refugees and displaced children. In the 70s, The Abbey was lent to the exiled Bishop Colin Winter to house the Namibia International Peace Centre. In 1978, the Astor family sold the house and in 1980 it came into possession of The New Era Centre, a non-profit charity led by Fred Blum and Bishop Stephen Verney. The New Era Centre used The Abbey as a spiritual retreat and conference centre, and changed its name to The Abbey, Sutton Courtenay in the 1990s.
The Abbey, Sutton Courtenay is a "residential centre in which a spiritual community offers hospitality to people" who are seeking spiritual refreshment, personal growth and healing. The Abbey also organises public events concerning spirituality, personal development, education, music and the arts.
Buildings
The Abbey forms a quadrangle with an inner courtyard. It has 28 rooms and a great hall. The two-storey building has clay roof tiles on a structure made with stone and timber. Originally, it had a thatched roof. Four ranges are arranged around the central courtyard. The oldest surviving parts of The Abbey are the north and west ranges, the frames of which were originally from wood, parts of which were later encased in stone in order to stabilise the structure.
Originally, The Abbey's main entrance to was through a rear door of the passage separating the service wing from the great hall. Nowadays, the main entrance is on the east side with a Gothic arch, a 1980s insertion replacing a narrow door, leading to the courtyard.
The earliest documentations of the site are from the nineteenth century. Edward Blore made sketches of the interior of the hall and of the house as seen from the northwest, which served as the basis of the engravings published by John Henry Parker in 1853. Parker also published a plan of the building. Peter Spencer Spokes and John M. Fletcher published a partial measure survey of the hall roof, and it was F.W.B. Charles who showed that the central truss of the hall must be base-cruck. However, most of these nineteenth-century accounts show inaccuracies.
Nowadays, there is also a guest house which is used for customers, conference guests and visitors. It is adjacent to the main house and it has its own kitchen with a dining area. In total, the guest house has nine rooms, of which five are twin rooms and four single.
West range
The service wing is located at the southwest corner of the building, the southern part of its west range, and was built in the late thirteenth century. The wing is largely timber-framed. On the ground floor in the southwest end, the wing seems to incorporate a stone wall of an earlier structure, in which lateral chimney stacks have been built with fireplaces dating from the nineteenth century. The plastered stone wall on the west side, which is of timber above the first floor, was an underbuilding for an overhang. This wall consists of large ashlar blocks suggesting that that was done between the fifteenth and seventeenth century and it had a three-light Perpendicular window. Its timber-framed north wall also supports the framework of the great hall situated north of the service wing. The south wall of the great hall and north wall of the service wing are connected on the first floor, but not on the ground floor, creating a covered passage which originally served as The Abbey's main entrance. The dormer roof between the truss of the great hall and the service wing is done in a thirteenth-century technique. The roof of the service wing itself, however, is post-medieval. Today, the service wing houses accommodation and a meditation room.
The great hall was originally timber-framed and integrated with the contemporary service wing. It was cased in stone between 1320 and 1340 to prevent deforming of the base crucks under shear stress. The hall has two equal bays and the four two-light windows have been replaced in the twentieth century by three-light Perpendicular windows. The stonework of the northeastern doorway was largely renewed in the nineteenth century. It has wave-moulded jambs, voussoirs and an ogee-scroll hood mould. The original southern doorway was less important and similar in style, but with chamfered jambs. The northern end of the east wall abuts the north range with a straight joint, while the joint of the north range with the west wall is obscured by plaster. The doorway in the east wall has been rebuilt in brick. The west wall of the hall is castellated and probably early nineteenth century. The great hall survives open to the roof, with one cruck truss carrying a king post which is unique in that a ceiling has never hidden it. The workmanship of the timber structure is of exceptional quality. The main timbers are made from very large trees carefully sawn to avoid waney edges. All four posts have been made from the same tree. The structure has nineteenth- and twentieth-century renovations. The great wall has a wooden floor and can accommodate up to sixty people seated.
North range
In the courtyard between the north and west range is a timber-framed staircase outshut, dating from before the stone casing of the early fourteenth century. The stair is modern and leads to a door on the first floor of the north range. The outshut roof was probably repaired in the seventeenth century with an inserted purlin.
The northern range is roofed in six bays. The western three bays were originally also built in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, while the eastern three bays of the northern range have timber work in the roof that indicates a fifteenth-century date.
The finish of the timbers of the three western bays in the north range is of inferior quality to that of the hall. On the ground floor was a parlour now used as a dining room, located under the two most western bays. The walls of this parlour vary in size. The west wall contains a three-light Perpendicular window, the north wall contains three two-light ones. The present fireplace is modern but there must have been a chimney since the fifteenth century. East of the parlour, the floor level rises and there is a cross passage. The door at the north end of the passage became blocked and was reopened only in the 1980s. East to the passage, under the third bay from the west, is a lodged floor. Originally, this bay was divided in a room to the north and a narrow room or corridor to the south. The first floor of these western three bays originally served as a great chamber, the second most important room in a medieval English manor house. This chamber was entered through a door from the staircase outshut. It is dominated by two fourteenth-century two-light transom windows in the west gable and in the north wall. The reveals of a third window also remain in the north wall. The present fireplace has musician corbels from the fifteenth century. The roof structure was similar to the open roof of the great hall until probably the seventeenth century, when the room was separated into two rooms, with a corridor on the south side of the eastern room. These rooms now serve as the library and dining room respectively.
On the ground floor of the three eastern bays, the third bay from the east was probably open to the roof and is nowadays part of the same room with the third bay from the west (the room east of the parlour). It has a small lancet window in the northern wall at the base of the chimney. The two easternmost bays formed one room and has a modern partition from a corridor to the south. The north and east walls are both from stone, and at the east end of the northern wall is a blocked window. The other two windows are modern. An overhang projected northwards to the room. The present timber south wall replaced a stone wall, remains of which were found during plumbing operations in 1987–8. On the first floor there was a solar in the second and third bay from the east which was to the west divided from the dining room by a timber-framed partition. On the north side, there are two nineteenth- or twentieth-century Gothic windows flanking a large chimney with a fireplace. There may have been a partition in the middle of the room before the fireplace was built. The solar has a partition to the east behind which was a chapel and a door from the north to the east range.
East range
Today, the east range holds the entrance archway. It was constructed around 1500 and contains three bays. The modern gatehouse, at the northern end of the east range, has a lancet window in its east wall. It has a jettied wooden frame upper part standing on stone walls.
South of the archway, the wall was timber framed but later partially infilled with brick and rubble as far as the chimney, where it joins the south range. This timber framed wall is on a different alignment than the gatehouse, probably to unite with the south wall of the southeastern block, which originally may have been part of a wall around the courtyard before being incorporated into the building.
The roof of the southern bay of the east range was black-smokened and may have served as a kitchen or brewhouse at some time into which a chimney was later inserted.
South range
The western part of the south range extends the service wing and was added during the mid-sixteenth century. The two storey structure was open to the eaves and was once used for the kitchen.
The adjoining southeast corner block appears to have been roofed, probably in the seventeenth century, to connect the east range with the south range. The construction of this block completed the courtyard plan.
Nowadays, the south range serves as the administration office of The Abbey. The southeast corner block contains a meeting room called 'The Hearth', seating up to eighteen people.
Grounds
In 1804, Francis Justice, who was in possession of the estate at the time, was allotted over two acres on the green north of the house. As a result of this enlargement of the curtilage, The Abbey now stands in the midst of extensive grounds and is approached by a lime tree avenue across the enclosure allotment, leading near to the east of the house. Although the avenue across the grounds appears to have existed before the enclosure (some trees are older than 1804) the house stood on the eastern edge of its curtilage until 1798. The old boundary wall survives, only circa two meters beyond the east wall of the house. The perimeter is indicated by old stone walls, wooden fencing and dead hedging.