[EH] Rufford Abbey. Nov 2024. (09)

Rufford Abbey is the best-preserved remains of a Cistercian abbey west cloister range in England. It's a Grade I Listed Building, (English Heritage). Built between 1147 and 1170 and from 1233 onwards, is now a partial ruin. Rufford Abbey Country Park, owned by Nottinghamshire County Council and managed by Parkwood Outdoors, is one of Nottinghamshire's favourite attractions.

 

In 1146 Gilbert de Gaunt, Earl of Lincoln, founded the Cistercian abbey of St Mary the Virgin. The monks of this order, also known as the ‘white monks’ because of their habits of undyed wool, believed in the value of an austere life based upon prayer and hard work. Rufford Abbey was moderately wealthy and able to sustain a community of monks between its completion in about 1170 and its suppression in 1536.

 

Rufford was one of the first abbeys in England to be affected by the Suppression of the Monasteries, and the whole estate was quickly acquired by George Talbot, 4th Earl of Shrewsbury. The conversion of the west range of monastic buildings into a house (1560–90) was undertaken by the sixth earl, who was the fourth and final husband of the indomitable Bess of Hardwick, from whom he was then bitterly estranged.

 

In 1610, a new projecting wing was added to the northern end of this range.

The estate was inherited in 1626 by Mary Talbot, sister of the 7th and 8h Earls of Shrewsbury, and it passed to her husband, George Savile.

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