Patterns of re-use : the transformation of former monastic buildings in post-dissolution Hertfordshire, 1540-1600

Abstract

The re-use of monastic buildings has been little studied and it is usually assumed that the vast majority of former monastic structures were simply plundered at the Dissolution or after for their materials. Two new emphases suggest that frequently this was not the case. First, by treating the surviving architectural evidence of all Hertfordshire's former monastic sites as a primary source, it can be shown that much medieval fabric is incorporated in later houses on these sites. Coupled with contemporary documentary records and later antiquarian accounts, this analysis enables a reconstruction to be made of the processes of re-use in the half-century after the Dissolution.

Its proximity to London and the new desire for a country seat made Hertfordshire a particularly attractive county to the gentry and nobility from the mid-16^th century onwards. Thus, between c.1540 and 1550 several of the first generation of post-Dissolution owners of former monastic buildings converted their new acquisitions into substantial country houses, including the crown at Ashridge, Sir Richard Lee at Sopwell and James Nedeham at Wymondley.

Lower down the social scale uncertainties over the future of former monastic property, not fully resolved until the religious settlement of Elizabeth's reign, appear to have discouraged immediate re-use and it was not until the 1570s and '80s that most of the conversion schemes at this level took place. In both phases, however, religious scruples seem to have been rare and generally insignificant.

The re-use of claustral buildings may have helped to foster the development of the gallery in Elizabethan architecture, but by the end of the 16^th century, the courtyard plan of the monastic conversion was largely obsolete. Initially attractive to lay owners because of the relative ease of re-use, the conversion of monastic buildings had ended in an architectural blind alley.

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