The State Rooms

Edmund Prideaux added these rooms in the mid-17th century, as parts of his ‘Piano Nobile’, or reception suite, for the Saloon. They lie directly above the Cloisters and may well have been designed to balance the Great Hall on the far side of Chard’s Tower.

The Prideaux rooms both have intricate plaster ceilings, devised, and moulded by the same hands as on the Grand Staircase ceiling, with the same degree of inventiveness.

The Oak room got its name from being full of oak in the 19th century. The room’s vast four-poster bed dates from 1830 but languished in the sawmills for over a hundred years, before being discovered.

John Fraunceis, last of the Gwyns, created this bedroom in the early 1800’s.

In 1714 the four-poster bed with its red damask hangings was made for Queen Anne’s visit to the Abbey during her tour of the Westcountry.

More areas of the house at Forde Abbey