Former Vicarage

LANCASTER

SD4761NW PRIORY CLOSE 1685-1/6/232 Former Vicarage

GV II

Former vicarage for the Priory Church of St Mary (qv), now an office. 1848 altered C20. In an Elizabethan vernacular style. Snecked sandstone with ashlar dressings, and steeply-pitched slate roofs with coped gables and kneelers. Double-depth plan with 2 parallel ridges and, to the front, 2 cross-wings, between which is the entrance, with a narrow one-bay extension to the right which has a slightly more projecting cross-wing; prominent chimney stacks on the outer wall of all the cross-wings. 2 storeys, plus cellars and attics, with a string course above the ground floor, and 5 unequal bays. The gabled porch has cross-windows in the sides and a Tudor-arched doorway under a shield bearing the coat of arms of the Borough of Lancaster. Above the porch is a bas-relief carved with a branch and a scroll bearing the name of the builder, Joseph Turner, Vicar. In the centre of the first floor is a 4-light mullioned and transomed window under a relieving arch. This window is repeated, but without the relieving arch, in a taller version which projects slightly on both floors of the right-hand cross-wing, while the left-hand cross-wing has a 5-light mullioned and transomed window in a canted bay on both the ground and first floors. The attics are lit, in the cross-wings, by 2-light windows and, above the entrance, by a 2-light gabled dormer. The cross-wing on the far right has mullioned and transomed windows, of 4 lights on the ground floor and 3 lights on the first floor, both set under relieving arches. The garden front includes a projecting central gabled wing with a 2-storey mullioned and transomed canted bay window.

Listing NGR: SD4741161968