The Abbey is a large house (formerly known as The Priory), built as the rectory by John Gunthorpe who was rector of Ditcheat, Dean of Wells and Lord Privy Seal, in 1473. The house was altered in 1667 for Christopher Coward; and given a new facade and rearranged internally in 1864–68, probably by James Piers St Aubyn for Rev. William Leir. The exterior is now mostly his Victorian neo-Tudor; inside there are reused fragments and some original 15th- and 17th-century work – coffered ceilings and the arch-braced roof of the ‘chapel wing’, but most of the elaborate Gothic work dates from the 1860s.