Anglesey Abbey

Anglesey Abbey is a National Trust property in the village of Lode, eight and a half kilometres northeast of Cambridge. The house stands on the remains of an Augustinian priory founded in the 12th century and rebuilt as a Jacobean mansion around 1600. The grounds cover nearly forty hectares of gardens, parkland and a working mill. Lord Fairhaven bought the estate in 1926 and spent forty years shaping both house and landscape to his taste. The house matters because it preserves Lord Fairhaven’s vast collection of furniture, art and books exactly as he arranged it. His library holds volumes once owned by actor David Garrick, while the walls display paintings by Gainsborough, Constable and Landseer. The Tapestry Hall contains a piece commissioned from the Cambridge Tapestry Company showing the abbey and his coat of arms. More than seventy-five clocks keep time across the rooms, topped by a four-tier pagoda clock in the living room. Visitors walk through the chapter-house living room with its 13th-century walls, the oak-panelled drawing room and the dining room made from the monks’ day room. The library wing and two-storey picture gallery display British paintings from the 18th and 19th centuries, including many views of Windsor Castle. Outside, lime and cedar avenues lead to Lode Mill, restored by Lord Fairhaven in 1934, where water still turns the wheels.