Forde Abbey

En un regard

Le château en bref

Set on the banks of the Axe, on the border between Dorset and Somerset, Forde Abbey brings together in a single long stone front nearly nine centuries of history: a 12th-century Cistercian monastery, the ambitious lodging of a last Renaissance abbot and the residence of a lawyer of Cromwell's Commonwealth. Few English houses show the transition from cloister to country-house life so clearly. The chapter house turned chapel, the long monks' dormitory and the refectory survive alongside the great hall and the three-storey porch built around 1528 by Abbot Thomas Chard. After 1649, Edmund Prideaux transformed the whole into a residence, giving the state rooms lavish plasterwork ceilings; the saloon houses a set of Mortlake tapestries woven after Raphael's cartoons for the Acts of the Apostles. The house is surrounded by some 12 hectares of renowned gardens, with ponds, a cascade, an arboretum, a walled kitchen garden and the centenary fountain. Still lived in by a family, it opens the house and gardens to visitors for much of the year, hosts weddings and has served as a setting for several films, including Far from the Madding Crowd.