Lockdown Visit to Coombe Abbey

Since most public places in the UK are still not open because of the quarantine restrictions, try taking a virtual tour of some of the gorgeous places you would like to visit. Here are some pictures of Coombe Abbey, in Warwickshire, once the ancestral home of the Craven family. Elizabeth Craven spent a lot of time there while she was married to William, 6th Baron Craven. The house was owned by the Craven family until the 20th century, when it became a hotel.

The house was built out of the remains of a mediaeval monastery, and as you approach the front entrance you see the oldest parts of the building. There are one or two Gothic style windows still remaining in the Tudor structure.

This central courtyard combines Tudor and Jacobean features. It is on the site of the quadrangle of the original monastery, and some vestiges of this remain here and there, well covered in ivy. 

On the Eastern side of the house, the architecture changes dramatically, morphing into a French-style Renaissance chateau, with a round tower and a moat! This part is not as old as it looks, nor is the moat, both being added when the house was adapted to please the taste of a Victorian owner.

When we go around to the northern side, there is another surprise. We see a neo-classical facade added in the 1680s for the 3rd Lord Craven. Designed by William Winde, it has a fine pediment and almost flat roof. It is side by side with an unaltered portion of the Tudor house, with gables and tall chimneys. Surely there are few houses in the world that offer such a medley of architectural styles. On this side of the building there are formal gardens and the heraldic animals date back to the Stuart period. 

The pediment is carved with the Craven coat of arms, supported by wreaths in graceful arabesques.

Inside the house has several fine dining-rooms including this one in the Tudor wing. The decor is not original.

A suit of armour reminds us of the Tudor origins of the building and the martial glory of the first Earl of Craven, founder of the family.

If you want to get some idea of what the house looked like when first adapted from a monastery into a private mansion, this early 19th-century view of the South side shows it as it was. There is no moat and the building, almost symmetrical, is architecturally harmonious. This is how Elizabeth Craven knew it and wrote about it in her novel The Witch and the Maid of Honour.

  Coombe Abbey from South 1810 Drawn by Davis engraved by Storer.

To find out more about Elizabeth Craven and the Craven family, read:-