Anglesey Abbey

About

Anglesey Abbey is a National Trust property in the village of Lode, 5+1⁄2 miles (8.9 km) northeast of Cambridge, England. The property includes a country house, built on the remains of a priory, 98 acres (400,000 m2) of gardens and landscaped grounds, and a working mill. The priory was closed in 1536 during the dissolution of the monasteries and a Jacobean-style house was built on the site of the ruins in about 1600. Owners down the centuries included Thomas Hobson and his Parker descendants, and three local clergymen. The last private owner was Lord Fairhaven who lived in the house from 1926 until he died in 1966. He made extensive additions to the house to accommodate his collection of furniture, art, books and objets d'art and landscaped the grounds. On his death, he left the house and its contents to the National Trust. Anglesey Abbey was built on the remains of a priory of Augustinian Canons regular, which was founded as a hospital of St Mary during the reign of Henry I (i.e., between 1100 and 1135) and endowed as a priory by Richard de Clare in 1212. The priory was closed in 1536 during the dissolution of the monasteries. Three years later it was granted to a lawyer, John Hynde. The priory was largely demolished and materials used in the construction of Madingley Hall. The Fowkes family acquired the property in 1595 and converted what remained of the demolished priory into a Jacobean-style house. The walls of the chapter house were incorporated into the main part of the domestic dwelling, with the calefactory or monks' day room to the north left as an outbuilding. Subsequent owners included the Cambridge carrier Thomas Hobson (of "Hobson's Choice"), his son-in-law barrister Thomas Parker and descendants, Cambridgeshire MP Samuel Shepheard and his daughter Lady Irvine, and George Leonard Jenyns. Owners did not always occupy the house themselves; it was leased out as a farmhouse at times. By the time Thomas Parker died in 1643 the property was known as Anglesey Abbey, rather than Priory. In 1848 Reverend John Hailstone, vicar of the neighbouring parish of Bottisham, son of botanist Samuel Hailstone and nephew of a geologist John Hailstone, purchased Anglesey Abbey and carried out restorations, converting the monks' day room into an entrance hall, adding a service wing and building a stable block from remaining medieval masonry. Several sketches he made of the house survive. He was also responsible for planting trees, including cedars, wellingtonia, weeping elm and silver lime, along the drive to the house. Reverend Hailstone lived in the house after his resignation as vicar of Bottisham in 1861 until he died in 1877. His widow sold it in 1888 to the Reverend James George Clark, who lived there with his family until 1912, when he was given a living in Hertfordshire and tenants were found for Anglesey Abbey. Anglesey Abbey was sold in 1926 to two brothers, Urban Huttleston Broughton (later 1st Baron Fairhaven) and Henry Rogers Broughton, who purchased it for its proximity to the horse-racing town of Newmarket and their stud at Great Barton near Bury St Edmunds. The brothers had inherited a fortune from their maternal grandfather, an American oil baron Henry Huttleston Rogers, and could live a life of leisure devoting themselves to owning and breeding racehorses, collecting art and creating gardens. The brothers made several alterations to the house soon after they bought it, converting the monks' day room from an entrance hall into a dining room, moving the front porch, adding a stone newell staircase and putting in fireplaces and panelling. The work was done by architect Sidney Parvin from the London firm of interior designers Turner Lord, and featured in a 1930 edition of Country Life. Henry moved out when he married in 193

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