Forde Abbey is a privately owned former Cistercian monastery in Dorset, England, with a postal address in Chard, Somerset.

The house and gardens are run as a tourist attraction while the 1,600-acre (650 ha) estate is farmed to provide additional revenue.

Between 1133 and 1136, wealthy nobleman Richard de Brioniis built a priory on his land at Brightley (meaning "bright" or "clear" pasture) and invited Gilbert, Abbot of Waverley in Surrey, to send 12 monks to form a new Cistercian community there.

One story is that the agricultural land surrounding the new priory was insufficiently fertile, forcing the monks to consider returning to the mother house in 1141.

However, Adelicia de Brioniis, the sister of Richard and successor to his estate, offered them an alternative site close to the River Axe in the manor of Thorncombe.

Forde Abbey was held for nearly seventy years by the Rosewells until it was sold in 1649 to Edmund Prideaux (died 1659), Member of Parliament for Lyme Regis and Treasurer of the Inner Temple, London.

Having purchased the property he converted the buildings into his private home,[5] with several classicising features, including the small loggia.

The monastic parts of the current house are the Great Hall, the north side of the original square of the cloisters as well as the monks' accommodation, the Upper Refectory and the Undercroft, which was the abbey's working area, and the Chapter House, which has been converted into a chapel.

Prideaux added some bedrooms and a reception area in the front of the building as part of his conversion of the abbey to a private house.