Buckland Abbey

• Founded: 1278 by Amicia, Countess of Devon (Cistercian)
• Grade: Grade I
• Drake: Bought 1581 (through intermediaries); lived there about 15 years
• National Trust: Given 1947; opened 1951
• Parish: Buckland Monachorum

Buckland Abbey is a Grade I listed house in Buckland Monachorum, near Yelverton on the west side of Dartmoor. Amicia, Countess of Devon, founded it as a Cistercian abbey in 1278, as a daughter house of Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight. The monks left when Henry VIII closed the abbey and the last abbot, John Toker, received a pension of 60 pounds a year.

Henry VIII sold the abbey in 1541 to Sir Richard Grenville the Elder, and his grandson Sir Richard Grenville the Younger finished converting it into a house in 1575 and 1576. In 1581 he sold it through intermediaries who were secretly acting for Sir Francis Drake, who lived there for about 15 years. Fires damaged it in 1915 and 1938, and it passed to the National Trust in 1947, opening to the public in 1951.

It holds part of the Plymouth City Museum collection, including Drake's Drum, as well as craft workshops, gardens and a medieval Great Barn. It is not near Buckland in the Moor, which is on the east side of the moor.