Buckfast Abbey

Buckfast Abbey stands beside the River Dart in Devon, a working Benedictine monastery rebuilt in the early 20th century. The site first housed a small Benedictine monastery in 1018, followed by a larger Cistercian abbey in 1134. After the Dissolution in 1539 the buildings were ruined and used as a stone quarry. French monks bought the site in 1882 and began to restore monastic life. By 1902 the community was formally reinstated as an abbey and a new church was completed in 1938. Today thirteen monks live and pray here. The abbey grew wealthy in the Middle Ages through wool trading and fisheries on the Dart and Avon. By the 14th century it owned seventeen manors and held markets and fairs that helped towns grow. The Black Death reduced the community, but rebuilding followed in the 15th century. After the Dissolution the last abbot, Gabriel Donne, surrendered the site to the Crown in 1539. Much of the medieval fabric survives only in fragments, including the abbot’s tower now part of the guesthouse. Visitors enter through the modern claustral ranges built around a grass court. The abbey church rises in Norman Transitional and Early English styles, its tower completed in 1937. Inside, the Blessed Sacrament Chapel holds a dalle de verre east window by Dom Charles Norris. The guesthouse incorporates the restored 14th-century abbot’s tower. Gardens slope down to the river, and the site remains a place of quiet prayer and welcome.