Bishop'S House

Bishop’s House is a house dating to 1622, built for Anthony and Dorothy Errington, as inscribed on the door lintel. It now serves as the Roman Catholic Bishop’s residence and offices since 1942. The house is constructed of rubble sandstone with large, irregular quoins and ashlar dressings, with a Welsh slate roof. The porch roof is pantiled with stone slates at the eaves. It has flat stone gable copings, and coursed squared sandstone upper courses to the rubble chimneys. The building is arranged in a U-plan, with three stories and attics, four bays in total, the outer bays being gabled.

A porch is located to the right of the third bay. It features a renewed round-arched door with raised panels, key and impost blocks, and a cornice. The porch gable has five ball finials and displays the date 1622. The windows are double-chamfered stone-mullioned, with four lights each, under continuous hood moulds, and relieving arches on the ground floor; two-light windows are set in the gable peaks. A single light is present on the first floor of the second bay to the left. A 19th-century bay window has been inserted on the ground floor to the left. There are chimney stacks on the left return, rear, and right returns, as well as two ridge stacks. The left rear wing has a double-span roof.

The interior includes a closed-well staircase, a narrower staircase in the right wing, an inserted chapel, and a large chimney piece dating to circa 1900 in the main ground floor room. There are stop-chamfered door surrounds to the stair and to the servants' wing from the top floor, possibly indicating a former long gallery; carved stone chimney pieces are present in the principal first floor room, while 18th-century five-panelled doors are found in the principal rooms, two-panelled doors elsewhere, and boarded doors in the servants’ wing. 18th-century chimney pieces are also found in the bedrooms, and panelled window shutters are above boarding to the lower section. The first floor ceilings feature egg-and-dart dentilled and guilloche mouldings. The roof comprises collared coupled rafters with overlapping purlins.

Historically, the house was inherited by Edward Montague in 1758; his wife, Elizabeth Montague, a celebrated letter-writer, visited annually.