page_title: Vale Royal Abbey
section_title: Later history
hierarchical_section_title: Vale Royal Abbey / Later history
caption_attribution_description: English: Vale Royal Abbey Golf Club house The Club house was built on the site of what was England's largest Cistercian Abbey, founded by Edward I, who in 1277 laid the first foundation stone. It took a further 53 years to complete the Abbey. When constructed, the Abbey was larger than Westminster Abbey. In the 16th century, following Henry VIII's Reformation and Dissolution of the Monasteries Acts, Thomas Holdcroft purchased the estate and pulled down the Abbey and built the Great House.
context_page_description: Vale Royal Abbey is a former medieval abbey and later country house in Whitegate England. The precise location and boundaries of the abbey are difficult to determine in today's landscape. The original building was founded c. 1270 by the Lord Edward, later Edward I for Cistercian monks. Edward had supposedly taken a vow during a rough sea crossing in the 1260s. Civil wars and political upheaval delayed the build until 1272, the year he inherited the throne. The original site at Darnhall was unsatisfactory, so was moved a few miles north to the Delamere Forest. Edward intended the structure to be on a grand scale—had it been completed it would have been the largest Cistercian monastery in the country—but his ambitions were frustrated by recurring financial difficulties.
  Early during construction, England became involved in war with Wales. As the treasury was thus in need of resources, Vale Royal lost all of its grants, skilled masons and builders. When work resumed in the late 14th century, the building was considerably smaller than originally planned. The project encountered other problems.
context_section_description: After protracted negotiations with the crown, Thomas Holcroft leased Vale Royal. Previously an obscure member of the lower Cheshire gentry, the acquisition made him a man of substance. In 1539 he demolished the church, telling King Henry in a letter that it was "plucked down". On 7 March 1544, the King confirmed Holcroft's ownership by granting him the abbey and much of its estates for £450.  Holcroft further removed many of the abbey's domestic buildings, retaining the south and west cloister ranges—including the abbot's house and the monks' dining hall and kitchen—as the core of his mansion (which was centred on the abbey cloister). Holcroft built a grand external staircase to his new first-floor entrance, which, suggests the archaeologist J. Patrick Greene, "reinforced the visual reminder to all visitors that a new regime now prevailed" at Vale Royal. Holcroft retained the abbey gatehouse as the courtyard's entrance, and leased the abbey and its lands until he was knighted in 1544 when he purchased it outright.
  Holcroft's heirs lived at Vale Royal until 1615. During their residency canted bay windows were introduced to the front of the wings which, along with their accompanying mullions and transoms, have been described by Pevsner as "a remarkably early instance of Elizabethan revivalism". It was also around this time that the "crude gothic porch" of Holcroft's was moved to the ground floor. At this date the house came into the hands of the Cholmondeley family (later Lords Delamere). Mary Cholmondeley (1562–1625), a powerful widow with extensive properties in the area, bought the abbey as a home for herself when her eldest son inherited the primary family estates at Cholmondeley. In August 1617, she entertained James I and a stag-hunting party at Vale Royal.
  The king enjoyed himself so much that he knighted two members of the family and, in a letter written shortly after his visit, offered to advance the political careers of Lady Mary's sons if they would come to court. His offer was so firmly refused that the King called her "the Bolde Lady of Cheshire". Mary passed the abbey and estate to her fourth son, Thomas (who founded the family's Vale Royal branch), at her death in 1625.
  During the English Civil War, the Cholmondeleys supported Charles I. Their allegiance had serious consequences; fighting took place at Vale Royal, the house was looted, and the building's south wing was burned down by Parliamentarian forces commanded by General John Lambert.
  Despite this, the Cholmondeley family continued to live in the abbey. A southeast wing, designed by Edward Blore, was added to the building in 1833. In 1860, Hugh Cholmondeley, Baron Delamere commissioned Chester architect John Douglas to recast the centre of the south range (which had been timber-framed). Douglas added a southwest wing the following year and altered the dining room. The church of St Mary, the capella extra portis (chapel outside the abbey gates), remained opposite the west lodge. The church was largely rebuilt in 1728, incorporating fabrica ecclesiae from a timber-framed church probably dating to the 14th century. In 1874–1875 Douglas remodelled St Mary's, changing its external appearance but retaining much of the internal structure.
  The Cholmondeley family lived in the abbey for over 300 years. In 1907 they rented it to a wealthy Manchester businessman Robert Dempster. Dempster had made his fortune from R & J Dempster and Sons, a gas-engineering company he founded in 1883. His second daughter, Edith, was born that year and lived at Vale Royal with her father until his 1925 death in South Africa. He was buried at Whitegate Church, near the abbey. Edith inherited half of his fortune and all of his personal effects, including the lease on Vale Royal. In the spring of 1926, she married Frank Pretty at Whitegate Church. Edith gave up the lease on Vale Royal and purchased the relatively modest Sutton Hoo estate later that year. Frank died at the end of 1934; Edith hired archaeologist Basil Brown to excavate some of the mounds on the Sutton Hoo estate in 1939,
caption: The Tudor mansion that replaced Vale Royal, as seen in 2005, built around the core of the former south and west cloister, contains surviving rooms (including the abbot's great hall).
exif: {}