Entrance to Abbey at Aston Abbotts - geograph

The Abbey, Aston Abbotts is a country house in Buckinghamshire,

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. The house derived its name from being a property of St. Albans Abbey in the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

, and it belonged to the Dormer family from the Dissolution of the Monasteries until the early 19th century. While in their ownership the house was almost continuously tenanted, and it was altered in a piecemeal way as a result. In the early 20th century it was a secondary seat of the

Spencer family The Spencer family is an aristocratic family in the United Kingdom. From the 16th century, its members have held numerous titles including the dukedom of Marlborough, the earldoms of Sunderland and Spencer, and the Churchill barony. Two prom ...

of Coles Hall. It was the family home for Captain Harold and Mrs Beatrice (née Shaw) Morton in 1923 and sold in 1989 after their deaths. It is now an L-shaped house with a plain, mildly neo-Classical, south front of c.1800, masking a medieval hall and dining-room, and Queen Anne drawing-room at W. end; the smaller west wing is Elizabethan. There has been a property at the location since before the

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manus ...

. Although the Abbey has never been an ecclesiastical building, it was so named having been built on land confiscated from the Abbotts of St. Albans by Henry VIII. The property has had some illustrious owners including the

Duke of Buckingham Duke of Buckingham held with Duke of Chandos, referring to Buckingham, is a title that has been created several times in the peerages of England, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom. There have also been earls and marquesses of Buckingham. ...

, Sir James Clark Ross, the polar explorer who gave his name to many geographical features in the Antarctic, such as the Ross Ice Shelf, and President Benes of Czechoslovakia. During the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

from 1940 to 1945 Dr

Edvard Beneš Edvard Beneš (; 28 May 1884 – 3 September 1948) was a Czech politician and statesman who served as the president of Czechoslovakia from 1935 to 1938, and again from 1945 to 1948. He also led the Czechoslovak government-in-exile 1939 to 194 ...

, the exiled President of

Czechoslovakia , rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי, , common_name = Czechoslovakia , life_span = 1918–19391945–1992 , p1 = Austria-Hungary , image_p1 ...

, stayed at the Abbey in Aston Abbotts. During this period the Morton family moved to The White House, Aston Abbotts. Major Morton being invested him as a Commander in the Order of the White Lion (

Order of the White Lion The Order of the White Lion ( cs, Řád Bílého lva) is the highest order of the Czech Republic. It continues a Czechoslovak order of the same name created in 1922 as an award for foreigners (Czechoslovakia had no civilian decoration for its ...

, third class), for services to the Home Guard and wartime defence of the Czechoslovaks. In the gardens of the Abbey there is a lake with two islands, named after the Ross expedition's ships HMS ''Erebus'' and HMS ''Terror''.

References

{{coord, 51.8721, -0.7734, type:landmark_region:GB, display=title Abbey, Aston Abbotts