Step inside a living 900-year-old Cistercian abbey — still a private family home — and explore its 30 acres of award-winning gardens, ending with a proper Dorset cream tea in the medieval undercroft. One of England's great hidden houses.
What to expect
A 25-minute taxi from Lyme Regis deposits you at the abbey's honey-stone gatehouse. The house tour reveals the Mortlake Tapestries — copies of Raphael's Acts of the Apostles cartoons commissioned for the Vatican — hanging in their original Baroque saloon. Outside, the 30-acre gardens unfold through a cascade, bog garden, walled kitchen garden and Britain's tallest fountain. The Undercroft tearoom, a vaulted 12th-century monk's dormitory, serves clotted-cream teas with Dorset-made jam.
Good to know
Forde Abbey is approximately 10 miles from Lyme Regis — arrange a local taxi each way (approx. GBP 25 each way). House open select days; check the website calendar before travelling. Allow 3 hours minimum. Pre-book cream tea to guarantee a table.