Description

TR 34 NW
2/29

LANGDON
LANGDON ABBEY
Langdon Abbey

27.3.52

GV
II*
House. C12, C16 and late C17 altered mid C19. Built for Thornhill family on remains of Premonstratensian Abbey. Red brick in irregular Flemish, stretcher bond and English bond, with flint and dressed stone sections to rear. Plain tiled roof.

Entrance front; late C17, two storeys and basement with plinth, plat band and boxed eaves to hipped roof, with stacks to left, centre left and to right. C19 fenestration, regular to right hand of elevations, with two tripartite sashes and central segmentally headed sash, and two tripartite sashes on ground floor with central door of six panels with semi-circular fanlight in rendered rusticated surround. The left hand portion has one sash on each floor in blocked larger window openings, and door of four raised and fielded panels with simple architrave. Four segmentally headed basement openings.

Rear elevation: L-shaped two storey hipped structure in English bond with brick arcading of giant pilasters carried across whole facade and projecting wing. The main wing with keyed and blocked arches on ground floor, now filled in, so as to form three bay portico effect, an unusually advanced classical feature in the east Kent Artisan Mannerist vocabulary. Projecting from the left hand projecting wing is one storey extension of stone blocks with galleting, the return wall of this wing is rebuilt in C18 brickwork.

Interior: rear wings with large scantling joists. Chamfered and stopped with quirk and tongue. Some fitted cupboards and doors with raised and fielded panelling, most features date from mid C19.

Cellars: the undercroft of the cellarium of the C12 abbey form the basis of the C17 cellars, including a barrel vaulted slype with finely gauged chalk, webbing, the main range at right angles to this, with the springers for groin vaults surviving, with chamfered arched and round headed stone doorways. Domed bread oven C18 survives in stone end wing.

Langdon Abbey was founded by William d'Auberville of Westernhanger 1189-1192 for white canons from Leyston Suffolk. Dedicated to St. Mary and St. Thomas the Martyr, the Abbey had an uneventful history until dissolution in 1535. A house was built by Samuel Thornhill after 1590 and extended by his successors until 1700, when sold to Waldershare estate. The church and conventual remains lay east of the house, excavated and back covered 1882 by Sir William St. John Hope.

Listing NGR: TR3263446960

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Langdon Abbey at Wikipedia
• Wikidata Q6485793

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  [(Shropshire)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1958)
• 
  Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990: Updated version
• 
  County Durham (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England) by Elizabeth Williamson Nikolaus Pevsner(1983-03-11)
• 
  Staffordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Somerset: South and West (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Norfolk 1: Norwich and North-East: Norwich and North-east v. 1 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)