Church House

Church House is a late 18th-century house, altered in approximately 1840, 1910, and the late 20th century. It is constructed of squared coursed sandstone with ashlar dressings, above an ashlar basement, and has roughly coursed rubble on the rear and gable walls. The building has a slate roof. The plan is double-depth, with a wide carriage entrance on the left providing access to a yard and former garden, as well as the main house doorway. The site slopes from left to right. The house is three storeys high, above the basement, and has four bays with chamfered quoins, nosed sill bands on each floor, and a cornice. Windows feature moulded architraves and glazing bar sashes; some upper-storey sashes are late 20th-century replacements. The carriage entrance has a moulded semicircular arch with a keystone and impost blocks. The doors have vertical raised and fielded panels. The main doorway, positioned halfway along the carriage passage, has a moulded architrave and a door with six raised and fielded panels.

At the rear, a canted bay window of ashlar with 12-pane sashes was added, probably around 1840. Due to the sloping ground, this bay is supported by an arrangement of beams and piers. Evidence suggests a conservatory, entered from the house via French windows with margin lights, was once located above the bay window on the first floor.

The interior layout is unusual, featuring a large open-well staircase in a spacious compartment to the right of the entrance. This staircase cuts across the windows of the second bay and has a shallow pitch, extending from the basement to the second floor, where it was altered circa 1910. It has an open string, three slender, swelling turned balusters per tread, and a mahogany handrail. The back of the first floor was altered around 1910 to combine into one room. A complicated arrangement of ceiling beams supports the second floor, over which lies a high meeting room, open to the roof, supported by king-post trusses.

The house’s early history is unclear but it may have been substantially rebuilt in the mid-19th century. In 1910, it was purchased by trustees, including Henry A Paley and Geoffrey L Austin, and converted into a Church House, a church hall for meetings, bazaars, and performances, for the Parish Church of St Mary, now known as The Priory.