The sole member of the community to achieve some degree of historical prominence was John Hooper, a man with an obscure personal history who became a Calvinist, was appointed Anglican Bishop of Gloucester but met his end executed for heresy under Queen Mary I.

Subsequently, the status of the site declined and the abbey was used as farm buildings until the latter half of the nineteenth century when steps were taken to conserve the remains.

In addition to various landholdings with produced rent for the abbey they held the Right of Wreck, which meant they could claim shipwrecks washed up on the shore of their lands.

The eastern parts of the church were built first, and were likely finished in 1232, at which point the abbey received a royal donation of oak to build choir stalls.

The east range, which was completed first (probably by around 1250),[5] held the chapter house, sacristy, the monks' dormitory, day room, and a 19.7 metres (65 ft) long reredorter (latrine).

[6] Though Cleeve was by no means a wealthy house, the monks were able to make significant investment in remodelling their home so as to match the rising living standards of the later mediaeval period.

In the fourteenth-century elaborate polychrome tiled floors (an expensive and high status product) were laid throughout the abbey and in the mid-fifteenth century radical works were undertaken.

The last building work to be completed was the remodelling of the gatehouse, performed after 1510, though as late as 1534 the monks were engaged in a major project of renewing the cloister walks in the latest fashion.

However, the fourteenth century saw a change in fortunes: the Black Death, a worsening economic climate and poor administration left the abbey (like many others of its order) with sharply declining numbers of monks and saddled with major debt.

The internal discipline and morals of the community declined too: in 1400–01 it was reported to the government that the abbot of Cleeve and three other monks were leading a group of 200 bandits and attacking travellers in the region.

[20] However, things improved in the fifteenth century and despite the vast expense caused by the extravagant building projects of the last abbots, better management, access to new resources (for instance from the profits from the right to hold markets granted by the crown)[3] and a general improvement in the circumstances facing the house meant that just prior to the dissolution Cleeve was enjoying an Indian Summer of comfortable stability.

There were proposals from local gentry and even some of the king's officials for the Dissolution such as Sir Thomas Arundell that Cleeve should be granted a reprieve,[3] as a number of others among the smaller monasteries were, however, it was not to be and the monks finally left in the spring of 1537.

The church was demolished, save for the south wall which bounded the cloister, and the rest of the abbey converted into a mansion suitable for a gentleman.

[16] The farm house was converted into rental cottages, and the site became a tourist attraction, partly to bring traffic to the West Somerset Railway.

Cleeva Clapp a local farmers daughter, who was named after the abbey, acted as a guide and described her nightly "communings" with the ghosts of the monks for a shilling a head.

[22] Cleeve Abbey was passed back to the Crown in 1950–51[16] to pay Death Duties on the Luttrell estate and was managed by the Department for the Environment.

[28] The castle scenes in the children's musical-comedy television series Maid Marian and her Merry Men were filmed in Cleeve Abbey.