Abbey Church of Saint Mary

The Abbey Church of Saint Mary at Abbey Dore, in Herefordshire’s Golden Valley, England, is the standing east end of Dore Abbey, a Cistercian house founded about 1147 by Robert fitzHarold of Ewyas as a daughter of Morimond in France—the only English Cistercian foundation from that mother house. Stone building in local red sandstone began about 1175. The church, planned like Morimond, was called “sumptuous” by 1260 and consecrated in 1282 by Thomas de Cantilupe, Bishop of Hereford, to the Holy Trinity and Saint Mary. The cloister lay north of the church, not south, because of the steep valley. Wool estates supported the house until the Dissolution in 1536–37.

John Scudamore acquired the site. In 1633 his descendant John, Viscount Scudamore, restored the presbytery, crossing and transepts as the parish church: he blocked the nave, added a south-east tower, wooden ceilings by John Abel (reusing medieval timbers), a Laudian screen with Ionic columns and strapwork, and painted texts. R. W. Paul restored the church again in 1895–1904. Quadripartite vaults survive over the ambulatory and former eastern chapels; clustered shafts carry water-leaf and acanthus capitals. Roofless fragments of nave, sacristy and a corner of the twelve-sided chapter house remain.