2nd April
2014
A look back
at Cirencester's Abbey House
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Abbey House taken from the Parish Church in 1961 by Mrs Alwyn Watts of Pheasant Way, Cirencester.
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ABBEY House, Cirencester was a
country house that developed on the site of the former Cirencester Abbey
following the dissolution and demolition of the abbey at the Reformation in the
1530s.
The site of the dissolved abbey of
Cirencester was granted in 1564 to Richard Master physician to Queen Elizabeth
1.
Dr Master died in 1588, and it was
probably either his son, George, or more probably his grandson, Sir William
Master who demolished the old monastery buildings and constructed the house
depicted in an engraving of c.1710 by John Kip.
The early 17th-century house was five
bays square, with a projecting three-storey porch and two bay windows on the
entrance front facing Dollar Street.
Nothing is known of the internal
planning of the house, which is regrettable since this was clearly one of
several Gloucestershire houses in which the traditional layout of a central
hall with office and family wings was abandoned.
The square ground plan adopted at the
Abbey House made symmetrical external treatment easier, but caused difficulties
with lighting and roofing, which seem not to have been happily resolved here,
since Kip shows that internal gulleys were needed to dispose of the water from
the roof.
The Master family occupied the Abbey
House throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, and played an active part in the
life of the town.
Four consecutive generations
represented Cirencester in Parliament between 1624 and 1747, and Sir William
Master was on several occasions the unwilling host of members of the royal
family during the Civil War.
Although the house seems to have
avoided damage in the siege of Cirencester, the Master family estates were
sequestered, and Sir William, who had 12 children, was said to be in financial
difficulties in 1652.
The Jacobean Abbey House survived
until the 1770s, when according to some accounts, it was damaged by fire.
Between 1774 and 1776 Thomas Master
had it taken down and replaced by a new house, which was also square and
apparently stood on the old foundations, although it faced in the opposite
direction, out across the newly landscaped park.
A plan of 1774 already shows both the
block plan of the new house and the new layout of the grounds, although it is
unclear what had actually been accomplished by this date. Brewer says that the
old house "was taken down about 1776... and the building in our photograph
was shortly after erected on the same site".
The new house was designed by William
Donn a minor London architect, who was paid £40 for the plans but who
apparently did not supervise the work. As Donn claimed to have worked under
Capability Brown he may also have been responsible for the landscaping, but
there is no direct evidence for this.
The new house was built of rubble
stone with crude ashlar quoins and window surrounds, and was probably stuccoed
until the mid-19th century.
The original internal arrangement
consisted of a D-shaped entrance hall with a small staircase hall behind and a
large rectangular room to either side. That on the south was a dining room with
a screen of columns across one end; that to the north a drawing room. Across
the back of the house were the library, service stairs and Thomas Master's
dressing room.
Between 1817 and 1825 the ground
floor was extended in Greek Revival style to create a much larger semicircular
lobby. Internal changes were perhaps made to other parts of the house at the
same time, although Victorian alterations superseded any Grecian decoration.
Thomas Master died in 1823, and the
Abbey estate passed to his spinster daughter, Jane, who remained the owner
until 1863, when it passed to William Chester-Master. Either he or his son,
Thomas William Chester-Master who inherited in 1868, was probably responsible
for a major enlargement or rebuilding of the service wing at the rear of the
house.
Photographs show this to have been
built of coursed rubble stone, and the stucco on the house was probably removed
when this addition was made. Rather later in the century, bay windows were
added to the dining room and library and part of the service wing was
reconstructed as a single-storey block with a low balustrade, matching those
placed over the Victorian bay windows.
By 1897 the house was let, and it
remained in the occupation of tenants until shortly after the Second World War.
It then lay empty and deteriorating for over a decade while extensive attempts
were made to find a new tenant, but it was finally demolished in 1964. Flats
for the elderly were then built on the site, and the grounds were presented to
the town as a public park by Mr R.G. Chester-Master in 1965.
From the Wilts & Glos.
Standard
This picture was posted by Robert Heaven on Old Ciren Facebook page:
