Main photograph by Michael Statham, who also added some useful information about the involvement of W. Clarke, Llandaff. You may use the photograph, and the images scanned by the author, without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer or source, and (2) link your document to this URL in a web project or cite it in a print one. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
Caldey Monastery, designed by John Coates Carter (1859-1927), was built from 1907-12, using whitewashed roughcast with red tile dressings, and is located on Caldey Island, south of Tenby on the coast of Pembrokeshire, S. Wales. It was given the status of an Abbey in 1959, and was Grade II* listed in 1996 ("Caldey Abbey").
Shown above is probably the most striking view, that of the three-storey north range, with its attics, seen on its prominence above a rock-garden. What is shown here is helpfully described in the listing text's notes as follows:
Full-height basement has massive red brick broad arches, ground floor has narrow arched windows with brick sill course and tile arched hoods linked by string course, and top floor has similar sill and string courses linking arches, windows are in pairs with stone jambs and centre pier. Massive hipped roof with end gablets and roughcast tall stacks, at left end, and on front roof slope. Six dormers of between 2 and 8 lights, 5 flat-roofed with pendants to cornices, the 4th with the main chimney rising through, the 6th with pyramid roof restored in 2001.
On the right is the Grade II listed St Martin's Tower, completed in 1911, and also showing the influence of C.F.A Voysey. It is now often known as the Oblates' Tower (see "St Martin's Tower").
Background
The island is thought to have housed a monastery from the sixth century, right up until the sixteenth-century dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. But in 1906 a new one was established there, as an Anglican Benedictine house, by the B. F. Carlyle (1874-1955), who took the name of Aelred. A charismatic proponent of the monastic life, Aelred originally founded the order in 1896, his community of Anglican Benedictine monks demonstrating the renewed interest taken in monastic and conventual life in the Church of England during the second half of the nineteenth century. After an earlier stay on Caldey, Aelred was able to purchase the island for a permanent base in 1906.
A master plan for the establishment was now drawn up by John Cyril Hawes (1876-1956), a devoutly religious architect who had been influenced by W.R. Lethaby and the Arts and Crafts Movement. Hawes had joined the Benedictine community on the island, and proposed a complex along the lines of medieval abbeys found in France, or, closer to home, the cathedral in Durham. But his plans for the main structure were not approved, and he left the island, eventually pursuing his twin religious and architectural callings in Australia.
Aelred then turned to the Welsh and suitably Anglo-Catholic Coates Carter, who soon drew up his own Arts-and-Crafts inspired proposals for the complex, publishing them in booklet form in 1907. Building work commenced that very year. The end result was probably the architect's most important and certainly his most striking work. The prominent South Wales firm of W. Clarke, Llandaff carved gilded statues of the four evangelists (material unspecified) and some emblems (location unspecified) for the monks in 1908, and in 1910 the firm built some furniture for it, including a chair for the Abbot, a litany desk and 2 acolyte stools.
Left: The main buildings in 1912, as shown in Shepherd, p. 54. Right: Captioned "The Guest House, Isle of Caldey," this view from another angle shows the setting of the buildings (Shepherd 139).
Interestingly, the first guest house predated the rest of the complex: "In January, 1905, a simple and inexpensive Guest House was built near the Monastery, which proved of great sshown above ervice in adding friends to the Community." Guests, who seem to have used it as a retreat, cheered the small isolated community, and carried "the spiritual force of the Monastery ... out through them into the world" (Shepherd 38).
Later History
Inevitably, there have been changes over the years. The original guest house itself was superseded by another one: later in The Benedictines of Caldey Island we read that "the fourth side of the buildings will consist of a Library, Guest House for Retreatants, Cells, and Cloister: all these buildings, it is hoped, will be finished by next Christmas" (63). Much later, a fire of 1940 destroyed a range of cottages west of the chapel, which were never rebuilt. But, on the other hand, some other lost features were restored when the roofs were retiled at the beginning of this century. The buildings are still considered to "represent the most important complex of buildings built in Wales influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement of the early C20" ("Caldey Abbey").
As for the monks themselves, in 1915, soon after the buildings were completed, the decision was made to secede from the Church of England and unite "with the Holy See" (Sockman 181), and Anglican donors who had supported the establishment were offered refunds (which some took, to the tune, in total, of £2000, see Sockman 182). Renne M. Kollar, who traces the development of the order under its charismatic leadership, believes that the clearly charismatic Father Aelred, who had previously enjoyed the support of Archbishop of Canterbury, had created "a paradise for High Churchmen" here; but now "the experiment was in ruins" (205). Nevertheless, the monastery he established is still there, now housing the Reformed Cistercian Order ("Caldey Monastery, Caldey Island").
Links to Related Material
Bibliography
"Caldey Abbey." British Listed Buildings. Web. 31 October 2024.
Coates Carter, J. The Proposed Monastery Buildings: Isle of Caldey, South Wales. London: Mowbray, 1907. Googe Books (very limited view).
Caldey Abbey. British Listed Buildings. Web. 31 October 2024.
Caldey Monastery, Caldey Island. Coflein (The online catalogue of archaeology, buildings, industrial and maritime heritage in Wales). Web. 31 October 2024.
Evans, A. G. "John Cyril Hawes (1876–1956)." Australian Dictionary of Biography. Vol. 9 (1983). Online ed. Web. 30 October 2024.
Kollar, Rene M. “Anglo-Catholicism in the Church of England, 1895-1913: Abbot Aelred Carlyle and the Monks of Caldey Island.” The Harvard Theological Review 76, no. 2 (1983): 205–24. Available on Jstor: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1509501
Shepherd, William Eichard, ed. The Benedictines of Caldey Island: containing the history, purpose, method, and summary of the rule of the Benedictines of the Isle of Caldey, S. Wales (Formerly of Painsthorpe, York). 2nd ed. Isle of Caldey, S. Wales: The Abbey, 1912. Internet Archive, from a copy in the University of California Libraries. Web. 31 October, 2024.
Sockman, Ralph W. The Revival of the Conventual Life in the Church of England in the Nineteenth Century. New York: W.D. Graw, 1917. HathiTrust, from a copy in the University of California Libraries. Web. 31 October, 2024.
"St Martin's Tower." British Listed Buildings. Web. 31 October 2024.
Thomas, Phil. "John Coates Carter Building a Sense of Place." www.building conservation.com. Web. 31 October 2024.
Created 31 October 2024