The richest monastic house in the county was the Cistercian Priory of Plympton, of which little now remains beyond the refectory and the kitchen. Of the Benedictine monastery of Tavistock, an establishment second in wealth only to Plympton, the gateway, a porch, and two towers alone are left. The remains of the Norbertine abbey of Torre consist chiefly of the refectory, a gate-house, and the fine building known as the Spanish Barn, from a tradition that Spanish prisoners of war were confined in it.
The two Cistercian houses of Buckfast and Buckland are specially interesting. The ruins of the former, which was a very ancient and very rich establishment, whose last abbot attained his office as a reward for having helped to capture Tyndale, were bought in 1882 by a community of French monks, who have rebuilt much of the abbey in the original style. Part of Buckland Abbey, which had been converted into a dwelling-house in Henry VIII's time, was bought and rebuilt by Sir Francis Drake. Several relics of Drake are preserved here, and the house, with its fine cedars and stately tulip trees, is one of the most picturesque buildings in Devon. Hartland Abbey, originally founded, like Buckfast, in Saxon times, has also been converted into a dwelling-house, into which were built the Early English cloisters. At Leigh, near Christow, are the very picturesque remains—a fine gate-house, the refectory, and the dormitory—of a small cell connected with Buckland Abbey.
Buckland Abbey
Other monastic remains, mostly in a fragmentary condition, are those at Polsloe (Benedictine nuns), Denbury (Benedictine cell connected with Tavistock), Newenham and Dunkeswell (both Cistercian), Cornworthy (Augustinian nuns), and Frithelstock (a house of Augustinian canons).
[21. Architecture—(b) Military.]
As has already been pointed out, there were in Devonshire a very great number of primitive castles or fortresses, generally on the tops of hills, and consisting simply of enclosures surrounded by ramparts of earth or of loose stones. After the Norman Conquest castles of a very different type, strongly built of stone, were erected in our county, as in many other parts of England, partly by order of the king himself, and partly by his knights and nobles, who found it necessary to defend themselves against the Saxons, of whose lands they had taken possession. By the end of the reign of King Stephen, after less than ninety years of Norman rule, there were 1115 such strongholds in England.