In the rolling green hills of Monmouthshire, close to the market town of Abergavenny, lies a whitewashed stone monastery, built in the 19th century. This is Capel-y-Ffin Monastery, set around a square central courtyard and surrounded by eight acres of gardens and grounds. Outside, there is a white statue of the Virgin Mary and the stone ruins of a former church, now part of the greenery. If you’ve ever dreamed of enjoying the tranquillity of a monastery —without the commitment to a monastic lifestyle— this is your chance. Capel-y-Ffin has been listed for sale with Fine & Country for £1.5million. The monastery, now Grade II-listed, was designed by Charles Buckeridge, a Gothic revival architect who trained under Sir George Gilbert Scott. It was built in 1870 by Joseph Leycester Lyne, known as Father Ignatius, a Church of England monk and preacher who unsuccessfully tried to reintroduce the monastic tradition back into the Anglican church. Capel-y-Ffin (“the chapel of the end”) was a functioning monastery for over 40 years. After Lyne’s death in 1908, it passed to two other monastic communities, before it was bought in 1924 by Eric Gill, the controversial sculptor, letter cutter and designer of the Gill Sans...