Langdon Abbey

Langdon Abbey, Langdon

Listed on the National Heritage List for England. Search over 400,000 listed places

Overview

Heritage Category:: Listed Building
Grade:: II*
List Entry Number:: 1070055
Date first listed:: 27-Aug-1952
List Entry Name:: Langdon Abbey
Statutory Address:: Langdon Abbey, Langdon

The Missing Pieces Project

Share your view of unique places.

Add your contribution

Location

Location of this list entry and nearby places that are also listed. Use our map search to find more listed places.

There is a problem

Use of this mapping is subject to terms and conditions.

This map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale.

What is the National Heritage List for England?

The National Heritage List for England is a unique register of our country's most significant historic buildings and sites. The places on the list are protected by law and most are not open to the public.

The list includes:

🏠 Buildings
🏰 Scheduled monuments
🌳 Parks and gardens
⚔️ Battlefields
⚓ Shipwrecks

Find out more about listing

Historic England Archive

Search over 1 million photographs and drawings from the 1850s to the present day using our images archive.

Find Photos

Official list entry

Heritage Category:: Listed Building
Grade:: II*
List Entry Number:: 1070055
Date first listed:: 27-Aug-1952
List Entry Name:: Langdon Abbey
Statutory Address 1:: Langdon Abbey, Langdon

This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.

Unless the List entry states otherwise, it includes both the structure itself and any object or structure fixed to it (whether inside or outside) as well as any object or structure within the curtilage of the building.

For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.

Understanding list entries

Corrections and minor amendments

This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.

For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.

Understanding list entries

Corrections and minor amendments

Location

Statutory Address:: Langdon Abbey, Langdon

The building or site itself may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

County:: Kent
District:: Dover (District Authority)
Parish:: Langdon
National Grid Reference:: TR 32634 46960

Details

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

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:: 178468
Legacy System:: LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Hasted, E, History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent, (1797)
Newman, J, The Buildings of England: North East and East Kent, (1983), 369
'Archaeologia Cantiana' in Archaeologia Cantiana, , Vol. 15, (1889)

Legal

This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.