Buckland Abbey was established as a Cistercian abbey in 1278. Last erected in medieval England and Wales. Over 250 years, monks cultivated the large estate.
Monasteries were important in medieval civilization because they were centers of religion, study, and charity. Monasteries were affluent and politically powerful due to their huge landholdings. Cistercians, known as ‘white monks’ because their undyed robes, were a Benedictine offshoot with stringent rituals. They valued austerity, prayer, and hard work.
Cistercian monks lived in huge groups in distant, untamed locations and improved the land. Monks were ploughmen, dairymen, shepherds, carpenters, and masons. The order became one of the wealthiest and most prominent due to its agricultural and industrial investments. The monks erected the Great Barn to store wool, fleece, cow hides, oats, wheat, and fruit from their orchards. The Barn also kept tithes, a local levy that required farmers to provide 10% of their crops to the church.
The Great Barn was utilized for various agricultural uses and remodeled for ‘modern farming practices’ in the 1790s when Henry VIII abolished monasteries and sequestered their money.The Barn helped the war effort throughout WWII. The Admiralty stored grain there, as seen by large inscriptions on the stone walls.
The historic Barn now hosts events, exhibits, and spectacular Christmas decorations. The Dissolution of the Monasteries under King Henry VIII dissolved Buckland Abbey's monastic status. Buckland was sold to Sir Richard Grenville in 1541, although his son Roger may have lived there.
Roger perished aboard the Mary Rose, which sunk off Portsmouth in 1545, and never inherited Buckland. The estate passed to Roger's 21-year-old son, Sir Richard Grenville (The Younger). He renovated the Abbey, demolishing numerous monastic structures and turning the main church into a Tudor palace.
Sir Richard loved sailing and made several early expeditions to colonize North America.The mansion was sold to Elizabethan hero, sea captain, privateer, and slave trader Sir Francis Drake. The first Englishman to circle the world bought Buckland Abbey with some of his wealth. He became famous for defeating the Spanish Armada in 1588.Drake's career was varied and complicated. A woolen fabric shearmen family had lived on the same farm in Crowndale, near Tavistock, for centuries when he was born in 1540.
Drake, unlike his father, explored the sea in 1560, sailing aboard a slave ship owned by his kinsman, John Hawkins. Drake sailed again in 1562, 1564, and 1567, when he first commanded the Judith.Drake met several Atlantic inhabitants throughout his circumnavigation from 1577-1580. This comprised Europeans striving to dominate commerce and build colonies, liberated and enslaved Africans carried to North and South America, and Indigenous Native Americans whose local knowledge saved Drake and his crew.Drake encountered few slaves or Indigenous persons whose names are known. Diego and Maria are outliers.
Diego, a West African, served with Sir Francis Drake from 1572 until 1579. After being enslaved by the Spanish from West Africa (possibly Senegambia) to Panama, he became Drake's manservant and stayed in Plymouth before his last journey in 1579. Drake successfully attacked Spanish ports in Panama because to Diego's local expertise.
We must mention Maria, an African lady of unknown background, many times in documents or her name will be forgotten. Drake plundered cargo ships, galleons, and Central American and Mexican ports and cities throughout his circumnavigation. One ship belonged to Don Francisco de Zarate. The ship carried plenty of Philippine china, linen, taffeta, and silks. Drake grabbed the cargo but saved the ship. Drake received a gold and emerald brooch and enslaved people, including Maria, from Zarate as thanks. After Drake abandoned Maria on an Indonesian island, they stayed on Drake's ship until their return home.
Drake seldom lived in Buckland Abbey. His final expedition was in 1595, constantly thinking about sea. Drake died of dysentery in 1596 when a sickness on his ship prevented him from attacking the Spanish at Panama. He had no offspring, thus his brother Thomas Drake owned Buckland Abbey.Drakes and their successors owned Buckland until 1946. The family alternated between Buckland and Devon's Nutwell Court. The 18th-century agricultural improver William Marshall advised the family on farming improvements. The architect Samuel Pepys Cockerel remodeled elements of the structure and estate in the early 19th century.
Lady Astor urged the National Trust to buy Buckland Abbey in 1946. Buckland Abbey, the home of Plymouth's legendary son Sir Francis Drake, was a sacred emblem of our past and a national duty to preserve.
