ARCHIVES

This article inaugurates an “Archives” series exploring historical venues of the monastery and grounds. While our “Liturgy” series addresses aspects of liturgical time, this “Archives” series will examine our community space, discussing buildings and facilities that once shaped monastic life at Portsmouth but no longer remain visible to us.  

The Manor House and new priory and chapel, 1927

The Original Acquisition. Monastic life at Portsmouth originally centered around Hall Manor, the heart of the original land acquisition by founder Leonard Sargent over a century ago. That estate had maintained facilities typical of the late 19^th and early 20^th century. In addition to the stately manor, the proprietors had stables for horses, barns for agricultural work, housing for servants, and more. Few of these structures remain. Indeed, little is left from the earliest version of the School’s campus, with wave after wave of development giving way to the next stage of growth. And with the introduction of the new, in most cases, it was a farewell to the old, sooner or later. Yet our archival photographs provide vivid images of the former structures and lead us to imagine life in earlier times. Indeed, those elder among us can do more than imagine, as the extended and gradual evolution towards our present monastery and grounds means that many still have living memories of these buildings. 

Tree-lined road south of Manor House and early priory and school

The “Hall Manor” building serving the handful of monks in the fledgling monastic community soon proved inadequate, particularly with the School opening in 1926 to welcome 18 boys. Several stages of construction and expansion ensued, initiating a gradual migration east and uphill, toward the present “upper campus.” A striking note from the journal kept by then Prior Wulstan Knowles reveals that the monks were already envisioning future growth and expansion of the community. Knowles offers a glimpse of the activity of 1926 (with his original writing represented): 

The monastery and school of the 1930’s-40’s

Manor House centers the monastery and school of the 1940s and 1950s

The Early Centerpiece.  A 1908 publication entitled “Representative Men and Old Families of Rhode Island (J.H. Beers & company) includes George Gardner Hall, successful hotelier of Boston, and notes that, “Mr. Hall’s country place is in Portsmouth, R.I., where he owns one of the most picturesque locations along Narragansett Bay, in a locality replete with landmarks of historic interest.” It was this “picturesque location” that his recently widowed wife would pass on in 1917 to Leonard Sargent for $15,000. The Manor House itself has undergone repeated renovation and repurposing over the years, including the substantial upgrading of materials this summer (see our separate article). The textile manufacturer Amos Smith, who had the building constructed in 1864, engaged the well-known architect Richard Upjohn to design his home. Its stately lines were uninterrupted by additions, and the porch encompassed the three sides having views of the bay. One also detects in early photographs that the surrounding fields were heavily farmed (a theme for a later article in this series), lacking the trees and related overgrowth, leaving wide-ranging and unobstructed views.  

Within ten years, the Manor environs would be significantly transformed. John Walker, the former Director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., traces the history of construction for the monastery and school in a piece entitled, “Art and Architecture at Portsmouth Abbey,” published for the School’s 50^th anniversary in 1976. While remarking that, “A less ecclesiastical or scholastic building than the Manor House would be difficult to imagine,” he describes the construction that ensued to convert Hall’s “country place” into a cloister. He outlines the developments of the year 1926, a pivotal one for the Manor House area: “A priory, designed by the Boston architects Maginnis and Walsh, and consisting of a long, one-story house with six or seven small rooms for the monks to live in, joined the Manor House to the new chapel, formerly a farmer’s cottage and originally a billiards room.” If the Manor House does not seem “ecclesiastical,” one may be yet more scandalized to find the origins of the monastery’s chapel in a billiards room. 

Priory and Chapel. For much of its first four decades, Portsmouth’s liturgical life centered in its original chapel, the former billiard hall of the Hall Manor, converted to sacred purposes. The monastery and chapel stood between the current (soon to be former) student center and the Manor House, Brother Joseph Byron notes of the chapel, “In the original estate it was listed as a ‘Billiard House.’ which the Halls presumably converted into a cozy cottage... The building had quite a run architecturally.” One of the top-priority decisions for Leonard Sargent once he had acquired the property was to determine the proper place for an oratory. Br. Joseph relates that Dom Benedict Brosnahan, one of the initial founding group, who later elected to join the St. Anselm’s community in Washington, was tasked with overseeing the conversion of the billiard hall/cottage. In pairing the photos above, one sees the most recognizable feature linking the two incarnations is the triangular pediment above what became the chapel’s front door, formerly the high front window of the cottage, with a belfry now situated above.  

Classrooms and Dorms. Students of my own 70’s generation will still remember the warped and creaky floors, chalk dust, wooden desks and chairs of the old classrooms. While the trio of dorms built in the 1970’s removed school life from the “temporary” structures of the Manor area, academic space lingered for some time on “the lower campus” prior to construction of the Burden Classroom Building in the 1980’s. Several monks still maintained offices in the Manor House area: Fr. Hilary Martin and Fr. Damian Kearney, with a seminar room in “Manor” for the English class taught by “Dom Tom” (Thomas Liggett). The School library filled the lower floor of Manor House, the space now occupied by the School’s Admissions Office. And several other buildings lingered, a carriage barn/garage housing a gym, and the barn now re-envisioned in our present McGuire Art Building.

1940’s Aerial view from south with orchard east of St. Benet’s

The last remaining remnants of the Manor environs: admissions office and the girls’ dorm that still claims the name and domain of “Manor House,” a reconceived and soon-to-be-replaced student center that centered the first classrooms, and the now-dormant building referred to in recent decades as “The Loft,” though its days too may well be numbered. 

A Slow March Uphill. Walker outlines the “touching simplicity” in the architectural development flowing from 1926: “an addition was built on the Manor House to the north, comprising a dining hall on the ground floor and a small dormitory above. In 1927-28, the Red Dormitory was built to the northwest of the Manor House, and classrooms were added to the school house. In the following year, the New Dormitory was built to the west of the Red and the Chapel was enlarged.” The buildings were apparently constructed with an eye toward functionality and simplicity: “All these buildings were of wood and beaverboard,” materials that needed to be “frequently repainted” and repaired. He relates the story of a monk remarking to a parent concerning these edifices, that there was “nothing a paint brush could do that a match couldn’t do much better.” At the time of the fiftieth anniversary of the school in 1976, the Red was being used as a guest house. The New had been razed, the Red soon to follow. The wood and beaverboard of the first wave were soon replaced by the solid stonework of St. Benet’s dormitory, constructed in 1931, which later came to stand, in a way, as a great wall, dividing the early years of the Manor House environs from the contemporary architecture of today’s upper campus. The construction of the 1950s and 1960s consistently pushed the center of the life of abbey and school up the “hill to S.E.”, ultimately revolving around the Belluschi complex, which has centered life at Portsmouth for the last seven decades.

Early 1970’s aerial view from the N.E. points in the direction of development