Qualla: Torre Abbey

Torre Abbey: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 4.0. Six men in white robes arrived at Torquay in 1196, sent west from Welbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire with permission from a Devonshire lord named William Brewer to begin again. They were Premonstratensian canons, a strict order that favored white wool and silent meals, and the abbey they planted on Brewer's land would outgrow every other house of their order in England. Three and a half centuries later, when Henry VIII's commissioner walked through the gate in 1539 to take it all away, Torre Abbey was the richest Premonstratensian house in the country. What stands today at the edge of Torquay is the strangest kind of survivor: not the abbey the canons knew, but the long ghost of it, layered with Tudor renovations, Georgian elegance, a Spanish Armada prison story, and a contemporary art gallery hung with William Blake and Pre-Raphaelite paintings.

Read more: Torre Abbey on Qualla

Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 4.0

Torre Abbey: Six White Robes and a Gift of Land

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Derek Harper, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Premonstratensians were a French foundation, austere cousins to the Cistercians, and their canons combined monastic life with pastoral work in surrounding parishes. When William Brewer, lord of the manor of Torre, deeded land to the order in 1196, he gave them a small piece o...

Read more: Torre Abbey on Qualla

Image: Derek Harper | CC BY-SA 2.0

Torre Abbey: The Spanish Barn

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Derek Harper, CC BY-SA 2.0. Half a century after the dissolution, in the summer of 1588, the Spanish Armada was making its broken way along the south coast of England. One of its ships, the Nuestra Senora del Rosario, was captured by Francis Drake and brought into Torbay. Its crew, 397 men, needed somewhere...

Read more: Torre Abbey on Qualla

Image: Derek Harper | CC BY-SA 2.0

Torre Abbey: The Cary Family's Long Tenure

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Simon Cobb, CC0. After the dissolution the surviving abbey buildings became a private residence, converted in 1598 for Thomas Ridgeway MP, and then passed through a chain of owners until 1662, when the Cary family acquired them. The Carys would hold Torre Abbey for the next 268 years. They were C...

Read more: Torre Abbey on Qualla

Image: Simon Cobb | CC0

Torre Abbey: Art Under a Medieval Roof

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jazzamedeo, CC BY-SA 3.0. Torre Abbey reopened in July 2008 after a six-and-a-half-million-pound refurbishment funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, English Heritage, and the Friends of Torre Abbey. What visitors find inside is unexpected. The permanent collection includes works by William Blake, the Pre-R...

Read more: Torre Abbey on Qualla

Image: Jazzamedeo | CC BY-SA 3.0