Monument record 0063000000 - NOTLEY ABBEY

House of Augustinian canons (Arroasian) founded before 1162; dissolved 1538. Abbey of St Mary Virgin & St John Baptist, founded by Walter Giffard & his wife for 26 canons till C14 (B15).
Visible above ground: Abbot's house & remains of claustral buildings (B8).
Historic building assessment carried out by Oxford Archaeology in 2004 confirmed the phasing of the standing buildings and showed the extent of C20 rebuilding and alterations (B29).
Architects' plans of surviving buildings (B32).
The last abbot, Richard Ridge, signed the Acknowledgement of Royal Supremacy in 1535, and surrendered his house on 9 December, 1538. The deed of Surrender is signed by the prior and thirteen other canons besides the abbot; it takes the form of an enfeoffment of the house to Dr. London for the king's use (B5,B35).
Owned by Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh from 1945-1960 (B30).

The site of Notley Abbey, with fishponds, terraced gardens, water channels, roads, building platforms, boundaries and other landscape features of medieval and post medieval date are visible on historic aerial photographs and remote sensing data as extant earthworks and levelled earthworks and were mapped as part of the Aylesbury Vale Aerial Investigation and Mapping project (EBC18604). Located west of the River Thame, Long Crendon, and centred at SP 71488 09365. The site of Notley Abbey has been in use since the 12th century and the features mapped probably cover all of that time period but more especially the post dissolution house and gardens. The earthworks mapped include a flight of fishponds, ponds or other fishponds, a kitchen garden, the remains of buildings south of the site of the cloister, and water channels as well as the line of the precinct boundary visible as ditches and banks encircling the higher ground to the west of the site of the abbey. Later features include a large fishpond, Lenton’s Pond, which has been constructed over precinct boundary. Earthworks of banks and ditches are along the route of a road leading away from the site of the Abbey going west, which completes the circuit of the precinct boundary. The remains of one of the buildings south of the cloister can be seen as a U shaped subrectangular earthwork; the upstanding walls of which can be seen on the earliest, undated, photographs of the site. A grid of probable kitchen gardens can be seen extending north from the site of cloister, where the fishponds are also located, with water channels to supply the ponds and the gardens visible along both sides. (45-59)