Buckfast Abbey

For nearly a thousand years, people have been drawn here, too. They have come to search for God. For God who is everywhere, certainly, but as they happened upon this place, they sensed that its beauty, its silence and tranquillity, its community of people who were similarly searching, made it a place where God might easily be found.

This is what the monastic community of Buckfast Abbey still exists for today. To be a place where the monks and all who visit them might find God.

Buckfast Abbey conforms exactly to the original Cistercian ground plan. The basic shape is cruciform, with the Church positioned in an east-west direction, the cloister and domestic buildings lying on the south side.

Although the actual work of rebuilding the Abbey Church was done by the monks, the design originated from the architects Frederick and Edward Walters. The building style is Cistercian Transitional Norman, with several features based upon Cistercian abbeys found at Kirkstall near Leeds, and Tewkesbury in Gloucester.

12th century Cistercian architecture has a powerful simplicity, often to the point of austerity. Buckfast has elements of Cistercian design, such as pointed Gothic windows, all harmoniously complemented by rounded Romanesque arches of Anglo-Norman style. The exterior walls of the church and domestic buildings were built of local blue limestone. The window arches, quoins, coping stones, turrets and West Front are in mellow Ham Hill stone quarried in Somerset.

Buckfast Abbey, Buckfastleigh, Devon. TQ11 0EE.