Discover the history of Anglesey Abbey

Expert curated

Several paintings on a cream wall, with a small table and wooden chairs in front. — Paintings on display in the Upper Gallery at Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire | © National Trust Images/Andreas von Einsiedel

Anglesey Abbey is home to extraordinary treasures, orchestrated across carefully designed spaces by the 1st Lord Fairhaven in the mid-20th century. Lord Fairhaven lived at this Grade I-listed former monastic priory from 1926 until his death in 1966. He created a comfortable country home with an eclectic collection, using his great wealth to amass highly significant and diverse works of art, including silver, clocks, tapestries and sculpture, as well as an outstanding collection of books. However, the building itself has a long and fascinating history that stretches back over nine centuries.

Early history

Anglesey Abbey is believed to have been founded by Henry I in 1135 as the Hospital of St Mary. In the early 13th century, it was converted into a priory of Augustinian canons. Despite its name, it was never strictly speaking an abbey.

The canons' way of life ended abruptly in 1536 when Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries. Anglesey Abbey was granted to John Hynde, a lawyer. Hynde removed some of the roof to build Madingley Hall in Cambridge, leaving the Abbey to decay. In 1596, Anglesey was acquired by the Fowkes family. In 1609 they converted the remains of the monastic living quarters into a house.

It is believed the site represented a typical ‘fen edge’ settlement, with two large areas of fen marshland drained in the mid-17th century to take advantage of new land for cultivation and grazing. It is no surprise, then, that Anglesey Abbey was still strongly associated with its surrounding landscape and agricultural employment well into the 18th century.

17th to 19th centuries

Thomas Hobson owned the house from 1625–30, followed by the Parker family from 1630–1734. In 1734, Sir George Downing, 3rd Baronet, the founder of Downing College in Cambridge, bought the leasehold.

Samuel Shepheard MP owned the house from 1739–78. Shepheard was a wealthy merchant who served as director of the new East India Company and headed the South Sea Company. His father, Samuel Shepheard senior (c. 1648–1719), also an MP and merchant, had built the family fortune on overseas trade as a member of the Royal African Company (1695–8), a founder member of the new East India Company and a director of the South Sea Company, where he held the office of deputy-governor from 1713.

In 1848, the Reverend John Hailstone, vicar of the neighbouring parish of Bottisham, bought Anglesey Abbey. He made several changes to the building, demolishing surviving masonry from the monastic buildings to create a stable block, and removing the Jacobean dormer windows from the front of the house. He was probably responsible for naming the house Anglesey Abbey.

The Dining Room at Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire — Anglesey Abbey was formerly a priory for Augustinian canons | © National Trust Images/Andreas von Einsiedel

Huttleston Rogers Broughton, 1st Lord Fairhaven (1896–1966)

The individual with the greatest visual and cultural impact on Anglesey Abbey was undoubtedly the 1st Lord Fairhaven, whose peerage was awarded in 1961. Initially attracted by the property’s proximity to Newmarket for the horseracing, Huttleston and his younger brother Henry (1900–73) purchased Anglesey Abbey along with 45 acres of land in 1926, aged 30 and 26 respectively.

Lord Fairhaven was born in 1896 in Massachusetts to British civil engineer Urban Hanlon Broughton (1857–1929) and Cara Leland Rogers (1867–1939), the recently widowed second daughter of oil tycoon Henry Huttleston Rogers (Cara and Urban married in 1895). The Fairhavens’ great wealth came from Cara’s side of the family, her own father – known as ‘Hell Hound Rogers’ for his ruthless business tactics – being one of the last great ‘robber barons’ of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His wealth came primarily from an American industrial business in oil refining, gas, copper, and railroads, with Rogers co-founding Standard Oil (Exxon) of New Jersey.

Huttleston and his family moved to Britain in 1912, where he and his brother finished their schooling at Harrow before engaging in the war effort. In October 1916, Huttleston was commissioned into the 1st Life Guards, stationed at a barracks in Windsor, near the Broughton family home at Englefield Green. It was then that Huttleston started to acquire paintings, drawings and etchings depicting Windsor Castle. Following the Great War the brothers pursued their peacetime interests, thanks to provisions in their maternal grandfather’s will which made them independently wealthy.

Lord Fairhaven was deeply influenced by his mother, Cara’s, style and collection. Her great wealth funded both her philanthropy – her purchase and donation of Runnymede, the historic site where the Magna Carta was sealed in 1215, to the nation, for instance – and the acquisition of art for her dazzling house in Park Street, Mayfair. Huttleston not only inherited her spirit of philanthropy, but also her tastes and design ethos. He lifted – lock, stock and barrel – display cases and curated assemblages from her Mayfair home, so that it is primarily Cara’s taste we now see at Anglesey Abbey.

Between 1926 and 1966 Lord Fairhaven continued to expand, enhance and refine his presentation of Anglesey Abbey. The first major addition occurred after Lord Fairhaven acquired full ownership from his brother, in 1932, when the architect Sidney Parvin helped design a new library wing in 1937–38. Parvin then erected an addition to the north wing which encompassed a Tapestry Hall and a large stone staircase. The space displays tapestries and textiles but, more importantly, contains a cabinet full of jeweled crucifixes which had been Cara’s. The last major addition to the house under Lord Fairhaven took place from 1955–56, when the architect Sir Albert Richardson designed a two-story gallery to house Fairhaven’s collection of Continental Old Masters, including two Claude landscapes in the Lower Gallery, and much of the large collection of Fairhaven’s Windsor pictures in the Upper Gallery.

A guide shows visitors a painting of Lord Fairhaven, Anglesey Abbey, Cambridgeshire — A National Trust volunteer shows visitors a portrait of Lord Fairhaven | © National Trust Images/Trevor Ray Hart

Lord Fairhaven was also deeply interested in garden design and at Anglesey Abbey created one of the most significant 20th-century gardens in England. Working on a grand scale, Fairhaven and his garden team combined modern ideals of horticulture and forestry with the tradition of picturesque spatial planning. In addition to unique ‘garden rooms’ that were developed – including the Hyacinth Garden, Rose Garden, Dahlia Garden, Narcissus Garden and Herbaceous Garden – Fairhaven also oversaw the creation of the Arboretum, or woodland garden, and large formal gardens such as Coronation Avenue, Cross Avenue, and Warriors’ and Emperor’s Walks, installed to commemorate important historical events. He even went so far as to acquire a working mill on the property, known as Lode Mill, in 1934, to act primarily as a visual set piece to frame the backdrop of his garden. Along with his living ‘garden rooms’, Fairhaven amassed one of the most significant collections of garden statuary in the National Trust.

Lord Fairhaven remained at Anglesey Abbey until his death in 1966, when management of the building was taken over by the National Trust. Of his posthumous plans, Fairhaven wrote that, ‘I particularly enjoin the National Trust to keep the Abbey, inside and out, and the gardens, arranged as they are at the date of my death. My thought and hope is that in a changing world the house, its furniture and the gardens and their lay-out should be preserved and kept representative of an age and a way of life that is quickly passing’.

Anglesey Abbey and the National Trust

The National Trust continues to care for Anglesey Abbey in the spirit of Lord Fairhaven’s wishes, while adapting the site to meet the needs of visitors today. New interventions have been introduced into the gardens including the Winter Garden (1998), a significant snowdrop collection and a Woodland Play (2005) area for families. The service wing has been re-opened and presented as it was in the 1960s. The Opening of Waterloo Bridge by John Constable was conserved in 2022. Research into the collection is ongoing, with several re-cataloguing projects underway to inform the way in which the property is presented by the Trust.