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the Transept and South Aisle, which is of later date than the 
remainder of the building, built upon old arches. This was a 
Cistercian Abbey, dedicated to the B.V.M., but the name of the 
founder is doubtful, as well as its date. Cooke, Clarencieux King 
of Arms, mentions Walter de Scudamore in the 14th year of King 
Stephen as giving “ Fulke’s mead” to the Abbey of Dore. Dugdale 
states that in the days of Edward the Confessor was Ralph, Earl 
of Hereford, whose son Harold, after the conquest, had two sons, 
John, Lord of Sudley, and Robert, of the Castle of Ewias, a mile 
distant from Dore, who founded the Abbey. The date therefore 
must be about 1147, and the architecture of the remnant of the 
Abbey agrees with this year, being of the Transitional style 
between Norman and Early English. 
Externally there is very little left of the Abbey buildings, only 
an arch and one column of the Nave, formerly of eleven bays, but 
the elegant carving on the capitals betokens the early magnificence 
of the whole structure. Internally the building deserves a minute 
examination in all its parts. What remains of the building was 
restored to its present condition by John Viscount Scudamore in 
1634, and a large slab of slate giving full particulars of the 
restoration is affixed to the North wall of the Transept. 
At the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII. the 
site of the Abbey was granted to John Scudamore, of Holm Lacy, 
an ancestor of the restorer, the Viscount Scudamore, who was 
English Ambassador at Paris in the reign of Charles I., and who 
on succeeding to the property found the parson reading Divine 
service under a ruined arch, which alone preserved his book from 
the rain. The Viscount re-roofed the Transepts, Chancel, Aisles, 
and Ambulatory, and built the Tower, the whole of his work, 
according to Sir Gilbert Scott, being ‘“‘ so noble and spirited that 
all he had done should as far as possible be respected and 
preserved.” 
The present Vicar is quite of this view but finds it difficult to 
carry it out,funds being very scarce, and the height of the wall plate 
a a ed 
