Hartland Abbey, Devon, part II A seat of Sir Hugh and Lady Stucley
In the second of two articles, John Goodall looks at the abbey’s history after the Reformation and its descent in the hands of one family to the present
IN the late spring of 1796, the Revd John Swete, of Oxton House, near Exeter, set off on a tour of the north coast of Devon. A tireless traveller in the county and an admirer of the Picturesque, the journal of this wealthy clergyman notes his encounter near the village of Hartland with a Gothic lodge ‘at the opening of a narrow valley, surrounded by trees, and overrun with ivy’. Turning into the valley on a newly created drive, he descended through woodland, accompanied by a ‘little gurgling trout stream’, and emerged from the trees to see a full view of the ‘noble seat’ of Hartland Abbey. ‘The pile had an elegant and magnificent appearance, and having assumed to itself the Gothic style of architecture, seemed to be congruous in all its parts.’
He settled down to draw the house from the east and west, views that remain little changed to day. The setting, he enthused, was ‘uncommonly picturesque’ with ‘rising hills, richly overspread with woods’ and the valley between them filled by the house as if ‘absolutely to block it up’. Continuing on: ‘I found that the stream had risen into some importance, and the valley become more beautiful, as in approaching towards the sea, it spread itself out.’ As a crowning flourish, the parish church tower ‘finely ornamented with pinnacles and fretwork’ commanded the whole valley.
‘Whilst contemplating the beauty and situation of the church and tower,’ the Revd Swete continued, ‘a servant came to me, and in the most civil terms, requested that I would take refreshment: his master was from home, but his mistress would be glad to see me The time of the day and the prospect of a long ride through an unknown and almost an untravelled country prevented my acceptance of this polite offer.’ All he added to his description, therefore, was that a medieval abbey—described in last week’s issue—had ‘stood on the site of the present mansion’, and that ‘its remains had given place about 20 years ago to the present more commodious edifice… except a small part which has been incorporated in the new house’.
Despite his failure to enter Hartland Abbey, Swete did better than the vast majority of Devon antiquaries and diarists of the 17th and 18th centuries, most of whom—including Edward Prideaux, Francis Grose and Samuel and Nathaniel Buck—failed to visit at all. As a result, and in the absence of much documentation, th
