Dom Paul Louis Denis Bellot, O.S.B.
The modern Quarr Abbey was designed by a French Benedictine monk, Dom Paul Louis Denis Bellot. After qualifying in 1900 as an architect at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris he began his monastic life as a  Benedictine of the Solesmes community in 1902, at that time in exile at Appuldurcombe on the Isle of Wight. When the community moved to Quarr in 1907, Bellot was commissioned to design their new monastery which was completed in 1914.
Dom Bellot was ordained at Quarr on 10 June 1911 in the Iron Chapel which the monks had brought with them from Appuldurcombe, his church being still under construction.
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The church at Quarr is a fine example of  a monastic church, very large but also austere, embodying the aspirations of the monastic ideal. Dom Bellot’s views on architectural design could be summed up in his own words:
“The architect must not superimpose the laws of the beautiful upon the laws of the useful, but must know how to derive beauty from the laws of the useful.”
While a student of architecture he visited Spain, and was influenced by Spanish and Moorish architecture, which can be seen in this building.
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Dom Bellot was instructed to build monastery for a hundred monks on the traditional plan which had evolved from the Benedictine way of life over a thousand years previously. Although designed by a monk, Quarr was not built by monks but by 300 local builders.
As is so often the case, serious constraints were put on the architect, first financial and then a very short time for the completion of the residential parts. This called for simplicity of construction and cheap materials.
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Bellot chose to build in hard durable bricks imported from Belgium and Holland to withstand the internal stresses of the church; which is why the building shows so little sign of weathering. Dom Bellot was also attracted to these bricks by virtue of their warm colours, mostly pink, light red and pale yellow, with some rich red. He attached great importance to colour in a building as a means of assisting the eye appreciate line and construction and exploited the warmth and colour of his material to its fullest potential.
Dom Bellot designed other monasteries and churches in France, Holland, Portugal and Canada, but Quarr remains his finest work. He died of cancer in Canada on 5 July 1944. He is buried in the cemetry of the abbey St. Benoît-du-Lac. Architects continue working in his style and today this is known in Canada as “Belotism”. 
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