Stoneleighabbey.org Website Review

Please check directions before setting off as some sat navs will take you to the wrong location This has been a year of awards for Stoneleigh Abbey, winning Best alternative wedding venue in the Midland As*an wedding awards, and In 2018 we will be celebrating the work of Humphry Repton, the last great landscape designer of the eighte*nth century.Our season launches so come along to see our exhibition of the work he planned for Stoneleigh Abbey and the Original Red book he prepared for the Leigh With humble beginnings as a Cistercian monastic house in 1154, Stoneleigh Abbey was converted at the Dissolution into a comfortable family home.  One of the seats of the Leigh family, Stoneleigh has played host to several people of note, including King Charles I, Queen The fine Grade 1 listed English Mansion House is comprised of two halves; the first, made of red sandstone, is a fine example of a Jacobean house, built from the ruins of the monastery.  The second, the West Wing, was designed by famous architect Francis Smith of Warwick in the Baroque style.  Visitors to the Abbey can learn more of the house's history through a guided tour of the West Wing.  Stoneleigh Abbey was inherited by a relative of Jane Austen's mother, the Reverend Thomas Leigh. Jane Austen stayed with her mother in August 1806 as his guests. Many people feel that Stoneleigh Abbey was the model for Mansfield Park. But it is the reaction, of Jane's mother to the Abbey that is most interesting. During her visit with Jane she wrote a long letter to her daughter-in-law Mary detailing the house, the food, the servants. Learn more on our Jane Austen tours..... In 1809, Humphry Repton, the most respected landscape gardener of his time, was invited to Stoneleigh Abbey by Reverend Thomas Leigh to advise him on updating the Abbey landscape.  Repton created one of his ‘Red Books’, a collection of watercolour images of the house and grounds as they existed with overlays to suggest alterations to the estate.  While not all of his suggestions were implemented, the