Qualla: Buckland Abbey

Buckland Abbey: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Geertivp, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1581, Sir Richard Grenville sold his ancestral home to two men he did not realise were working for Sir Francis Drake. Grenville and Drake despised each other. Both were privateers, both were heroes of Elizabethan England, and both were destined for legendary deaths at sea, but they could not stand to share a county, let alone a country house. Drake got Buckland Abbey for £3,400 through that quiet bit of subterfuge, and he held it until he died in 1596. The Cistercian abbey that had been founded in 1278 by Amicia, Countess of Devon, has been a monastery, a country house, a Drake family seat, and a National Trust property where in 2014 a portrait hanging quietly on the wall turned out to be a £30 million Rembrandt.

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Image: Geertivp | CC BY-SA 4.0

Buckland Abbey: The Monks Who Sang Here

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Robert Ashby, CC BY-SA 2.0. Amicia, Countess of Devon founded Buckland Abbey in 1278 as a Cistercian house, a daughter foundation of Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight. Some historians have suggested she meant it as a memorial to her late husband and her son, both named Baldwin de Redvers. For 261 years the w...

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Image: Robert Ashby | CC BY-SA 2.0

Buckland Abbey: From Holy House to Privateer's Hall

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sandeepsea, CC BY-SA 3.0. When Henry sold the suppressed abbey in 1541, the buyer was Sir Richard Grenville the Elder, soldier-poet and Sewer of the Chamber to Henry VIII, and the last English Earl Marshal of Calais. He and his son Sir Roger Grenville began converting the abbey nave into a residence, rena...

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Image: Sandeepsea | CC BY-SA 3.0

Buckland Abbey: Drake's Drum and the Lady

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unidentified painter, Public domain. Sir Francis Drake lived at Buckland from 1581 until his death in 1596, returning from his circumnavigation of the world, his raids on Spanish ports, and finally his fatal expedition to the West Indies where he died of dysentery and was buried at sea in a lead coffin. His descenda...

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Image: Unidentified painter | Public domain

Buckland Abbey: The Rembrandt That Almost Wasn't

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Hawgood, CC BY-SA 2.0. In March 2013, the Rembrandt expert Ernst van de Wetering re-examined a small portrait at Buckland that had hung there for years, attributed only as a self-portrait by a follower of Rembrandt. Van de Wetering thought it was the real thing. The painting went to the Hamilton Kerr I...

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Image: David Hawgood | CC BY-SA 2.0