Lamp lit, a signal beaming with the bright simplicity of the creative spirit that he worshipped, Peter Campbell’s enamel of St Peter shines from the end of the shadowed hallway at The Abbey in Eye, guiding visitors toward the kitchen, the spiritual centre of the home during Kate, Peter and Adam’s time. From this beating heart, the long wooden wych elm table, to the vertiginous upper stairwell and the leaning boards of the third floor, The Abbey remains an exceptionally atmospheric, characterful and welcoming place, as well as being work of art in and of itself.
Maintained by son, Adam, in the condition it was left at the time of Kate’s death in 2014, the house is filled with Peter’s works as well as Kate’s carefully selected collections of crockery, pottery, artworks and furniture. Some of the finest examples of the arts and crafts movement are here gathered under one roof, where they maintain a sense of the personal and the cherished as part of a working home.
From the walls of the kitchen the countless, intricate patterns of individually selected tiles bloom outward from the heavy stonewalls. They do so now as evocatively as they would when visitors such as Rene Hague (Eric Gill’s son-in-law) came to discuss subjects like poet David Jones’s In Parenthesis, art fakery and subterfuge, stories of recent spy scandals and networks of artistic connection. Drink fuelled by one of the many bottles of wine kept in the well-stocked cellar, in conversations that could go on well into the night, these long evenings feel present now to visitors through the small objects that remain. Echoing alongside the heavy wooden table, the shelves still sing with the carefully placed notes and accompaniments that Kate’s collections would have added to the day to day during her lifetime, works of beauty, cherished fakery, and curiosity alike. Kate had an impeccable eye and room after room visitors are given sense of moving through a space of aesthetic and atmospheric delight, a once nurturing home for Suffolk’s creative community.
Originally founded in c. 1080-6 as a Benedictine Priory, the site has been repeatedly one of spiritual, love and power exchange, a veritable a home of the symbolic. Mirrored with, and paying subsidies to the French Priory of Bernay, the monastic complex itself was built in 1080 by Robert Malet, a Norman Baron, in memory of his father who fought in the Battle of Hastings. In 1536 the monastery was entirely dissolved by Henry the 8th, and given as a gift to Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk. Brandon famously and scandalously married Henry’s sister, a famous beauty of the time, Mary Tudor, expressly against the King’s instructions. For this treasonous crime he was fined 1000 pounds per year. The Abbey was returned to the crown one year after Brandon was gifted the property, but not before the magnificent church was entirely pillaged. Fortunately the lodgings were spared, and the medieval stone and timber building of The Abbey, which was only altered later by way of a more fashionable brick façade, remains relatively intact.
Though modest in terms of room size, the library at The Abbey overflows with the pages of books that map out a lifetime of the owner’s love for literature. A nest built of shelves and the smell of paperbacks that guard its entranceway, the room itself is watched over by an early self-portrait in the nearby hallway of a striking young Peter flushed with colour as a sultry, moody looking, literary character recently returned from sea.
Upstairs, in Peter’s workroom, the correspondence he left behind show just such a complex and colourful personality. Letters exchanged with Rene Hague, as well as countless love letters from admiring women, lie alongside drawer after drawer of preparatory sketches and other works on paper. Peter’s third floor workroom, a hideaway, feels like a monks inner sanctuary and is undoubtedly the most personal of the house, although evidently a monk Peter certainly was not.
The library also contains an example of one of several pieces of furniture that have been hand decorated by Peter with calligraphy, works of which spring up all over the home. These, alongside Kate’s very personal collections of porcelain and needlework, mean that The Abbey avoids ever feeling like a museum. Rather, the building continues to breath on an intimate, human level. Old windows and insulation are managed with the same ingenious leather pull-cord handle system to help keep internal doorways closed, installed by Peter and Kate. A sense of craft being present permeates throughout the home. The Abbey is a place of textured living, and one that continues to inspire visitors to this day.
In total Peter had three studios at The Abbey, one upstairs in his workroom, and two outdoor. The potters shed and garden are maintained voluntarily by a resident local to Eye, and the outer studios are still used by visiting artists and friends who work by radio, alongside Peter’s own painting and the heavy rope used to climb to mezzanine level of the room. Far from being a place merely to memorialise or remember, The Abbey is still very much a home to creativity and craft, a site of dedication and an echo of that singular life view Peter lived to his last.
The Abbey is an eternal site of the symbolic, the mythological, a place where the building itself continues to dream.
The Trust
The Abbey Foundation was set up by Kate in order to record and archive Peter’s exceptional body of work. The collection is not a complete catalogue. Many pieces have been sold and gifted over the years without documentation. We are however left with rich and varied tapestry of works in a variety of mediums. The product of an entire life dedicated to art. It is our great privilege to examine Peter’s work, his motivations and his life, which point to a passionate belief that shines out and keeps these works feeling fresh and alive today. This is a body of work that deserves its proper place in art history and recognition of what Peter achieved.
To this end, a major retrospective of exhibitions is currently being planned, alongside the publication of a visual book to establish Peter as one of Suffolk’s most prolific and important artists. Our task is to carry out Kate’s wishes to celebrate the art of Peter Campbell and share the historical importance of The Abbey and its occupants during the last 50 years.