SYON ABBEY

BENEDICTINE ABBEY, COPPER HILL, VA

New Monastery and Chapel

Completed 2007

THE monks of Syon Abbey approached Cram and Ferguson before they had even selected a site for their new monastery. Together, we developed with them a design inspired by the austere, meditative simplicity of Cistercian Gothic architecture, and laid out on traditional Benedictine lines. As we began work, they found their ideal site, a tranquil, beautiful tract of farmland along the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The abbey courtyard is ringed by a cloister connecting chapel and dormitory. While the other buildings are finished in stucco, the chapel is clad within and without with Spanish limestone and roofed with a structural wooden truss. Designed for twelve monks, it is oriented to the east. Other portions of the complex include refectory, kitchen, library and reading room, all on the main cloister level, with the cells above. The structure is carefully oriented on the site, with the southeastern exposure of the dormitory shielded from prevailing winds while catching the warmth of the sun. The monks themselves served as contractors, embodying their charism of ora et labora. Everything embodies a simple, hand-crafted perfection suited to monastic life, with details sparse but thoughtful: a rose window depicting the lives of English saints, a carved lion’s-head drainage scupper in the courtyard, a simple stone column capital, the crockets and pinnacles of the tower with its ring of bells.

Syon Abbey was completed in 2007.