page_title: Garendon Abbey
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Garendon Abbey / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Temple, of the 1730s, by Ambrose Phillipps of Garendon (d.1737). Of ashlar , with carved oak entablature and copper dome. Circular plan, loosely based on the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli. Raised on 4 steps, with a peristyle of Ionic columns. Entablature painted white, with the frieze of ox skulls and small bays with swags between. The roof member of the cornice has lions? heads at intervals. The centre of the temple has a circular apartment with rusticated walls, classical doorcase and 2 fold fielded-panel door. The interior originally contained a statue of Venus, now lost, perhaps destroyed by Luddite rioters in 1811. Mark Aironard, ?Ambrose Phillipps of Garendon?, Architectural History, 1965. – Colour in the foreground provided by rape seed, the bane of any sufferer of hayfever though fortunately I don't suffer from it myself. – I was a bit naughty in getting this shot as I trespassed by walking along a private road, though in doing so I didn't do any damage to the road (or anything else for that matter) which the landowner would have to prove if he wanted to sue me for civil trespass.
context_page_description: Garendon Abbey was a Cistercian abbey located between Shepshed and Loughborough, in Leicestershire, United Kingdom.
context_section_description: Garendon was founded by Robert de Beaumont, 2nd Earl of Leicester, in 1133, and was probably a daughter house of Waverley Abbey in Surrey. Garendon was one of a number of religious establishments founded or patronised by Robert. He endowed the abbey with 690 acres of land in Garendon, a Burgage tenement in Leicester and land at Dishley, Shepshed and Ringolthorpe.
  Within a century of foundation, the abbey gained lands at Burton on the Wolds, Eastwell, Ibstock, Stanton under Bardon and Welby, all in Leicestershire; land at Costock, Nottinghamshire; and at Heathcote, Derbyshire. Monastic granges were then developed near the abbey, and at Burton on the Wolds, Dishley, Goadby, Ibstock, Ringolthorpe, Stanton Under Bardon and Welby in Leicestershire; at Costock and Rempstone, Nottinghamshire; and in the Peak District, in Derbyshire. Through these granges the abbey conducted sheep farming "on a considerable scale".
  The abbey also gained two daughter houses, Biddlesden Abbey in Buckinghamshire, and Bordesley Abbey in Worcestershire.
  By the end of the 13th century, the abbey had fallen on hard times. The abbey had acquired debts of £120 and in 1295 the King had appointed a "special keeper" to administer the abbey's finance and deal with its debt problems.
  Despite the abbey's large endowments, its finances seem never to have recovered. In 1535 the abbey was recorded as having an annual income of £100. 18s. 10½d, and that "the large old monastery was partly ruinous". It was dissolved with the smaller monasteries (those with annual incomes of under £200) in 1536, with the abbot granted a pension of £30 a year.
caption: "The Temple of Venus": one of the Palladian follies built when the Abbey's former estate was landscaped
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