Qualla: Tavistock Abbey

Tavistock Abbey: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 4.0. Two of the early abbots of Tavistock became Bishops of Worcester, and one of them - Ealdred - is said to have placed the crown on William the Conqueror's head at Westminster in 1066. By that date Tavistock Abbey was already roughly a century old, had been sacked once by Danish raiders, had been rebuilt and confirmed in its lands by Æthelred the Unready, and was on its way to becoming the second-richest abbey in all of Devon. Today almost nothing of it stands: a refectory, two gateways, a porch, fragments of a wall. Yet the town of Tavistock is built largely from the abbey's own quarry, and the family who acquired its lands at the Dissolution would shape English political life for the next four centuries.

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Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 4.0

Tavistock Abbey: The Founding and the Vikings

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Raggatt2000 (talk), Public domain. Tavistock Abbey was founded as a Benedictine house dedicated to Saint Mary and Saint Rumon, the latter probably an Irish missionary who came to the West Country in the early Middle Ages and whose feast at Tavistock is kept on 28 or 30 August. The traditional founding date is 961....

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Image: Raggatt2000 (talk) | Public domain

Tavistock Abbey: Lands Across Three Counties

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. A 1193 papal bull of Pope Celestine III preserved the abbey's land holdings on paper, and the list reads like a gazetteer of the West Country. Milton Abbot in Lifton hundred, Hatherleigh, Burrington in North Tawton hundred, Romansleigh, Abbotsham, Worthygate in Parkham, Orleigh, ...

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Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 3.0

Tavistock Abbey: Greenish Stone

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Thorvaldsson, CC BY-SA 3.0. The abbey owned Hurdwick quarry just to the north of the town, and the stone the monks pulled out of it has an unusual character: a distinctly greenish cast, with a pitted surface that visitors sometimes mistake for weathering damage. The pitting is original to the stone. Most of...

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Image: Thorvaldsson | CC BY-SA 3.0

Tavistock Abbey: Surrender, 1539

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit SelfieCity, CC BY-SA 4.0. On 3 March 1539, John Peryn, the last abbot of Tavistock, signed the surrender deed. Twenty monks signed with him. The abbey's annual income at that point was assessed at £902 - second in Devon only to Plympton Abbey, and nearly twice the wealth of Buckfast Abbey. Peryn was grant...

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Image: SelfieCity | CC BY-SA 4.0

Tavistock Abbey: What Remains

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit (WT-en) Patrickmacgougan at English Wikivoyage, Public domain. Of the medieval abbey itself, the visible remains are modest: the refectory, two gateways, a porch, and stretches of perimeter wall, scattered through the centre of modern Tavistock. The Tavistock Heritage Trust manages the site, which is open daily from 10am and free to enter. A...

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Image: (WT-en) Patrickmacgougan at English Wikivoyage | Public domain