Chicksands Priory

Chicksands Priory is a country house incorporating the substantial remains of a Gilbertine priory, a double house founded around 1150 by Rose and Payn de Beauchamp. This was one of only about eleven such houses ever founded in England under the Order of Gilbert of Sempringham, the only medieval religious order of English origin. Chicksands was the third largest of these establishments, housing 55 canons and 120 nuns. The priory was dissolved in 1539.

Following dissolution, the property was initially granted to Richard and Elizabeth Snowe, then passed by 1587 into the possession of the Osborn family, who retained it until 1938 when it became Crown property. The house underwent significant architectural reworking: around 1735–40 Isaac Ware altered it for Sir Danvers Osborn, and in 1815 James Wyatt substantially reworked the building in Gothic Revival style for Sir George Osborn, with possible earlier works by Wyatt as well.

The building is constructed of coursed limestone, completely rendered to the exterior with ashlar dressing; later blocks are of red brick with ashlar dressings. Clay tile roofs are hipped at the south-west and south-east corners. The principal block represents a reworking of the south cloister of the priory and retains its quadrangle. A later 19th-century addition and service wing to the north form the south and east sides of a stable courtyard. The structure rises to two storeys with attics.

The east elevation of the main block features a quatrefoiled moulded eaves cornice and three-stage set-back buttresses rising to pinnacles. Seven evenly spaced windows of two trefoiled lights beneath 4-centred heads with hood moulds imitate some of the original priory windows. On the left, the ground floor contains a single-light window, above which sits a 15th-century canted oriel window containing fragments of medieval glass. A single-storey porch below the central window has a pointed arched doorway with ornate embattled parapet and pinnacles. The south and west elevations are stylistically similar, featuring pinnacled buttresses and the same eaves cornice. The south elevation has unevenly spaced first-floor windows again copying a 15th-century original, and a central canted bay to the ground floor with pointed arched windows and doorway with intersecting glazing bars. The west elevation displays irregular fenestration, mostly of two and three-lights under square heads, with six hipped dormers to the attic. Various chimneys, mostly ridge stacks, feature throughout.

The later north block's east elevation has mostly windows of two 4-centred arched lights under flat heads. The projecting crow-stepped gable contains a canted bay corbelling out to a rectangular bay at first floor. North of this is a 4-centred archway into the stable courtyard. Multiple ridge stacks with diagonal shafts are present. At the north end stands a late 18th-century block with blocked pointed-arched openings. Elevations overlooking the stable courtyard display mostly simple mullion and transom windows, gabled dormers, and doorways with 4-centred heads. The 18th-century block retains pointed arched openings.

The ground floor interior of the main block retains significant medieval features. The north wall, originally the south wall of the church, contains a small 13th-century doorway at its west end. The west range comprises seven bays of double-span vaulting with central octagonal columns. The south range retains two 15th-century windows overlooking the quadrangle, each of four lights under 4-centred heads. The east range was reworked by Wyatt in 15th-century style and extended westwards into the quadrangle; it features a vaulted ceiling, a broad staircase lit by a three-light quatrefoiled window, and crocketed and canopied niches. The first-floor decoration is predominantly early 19th-century in fairly restrained style, with foliate plasterwork, carved doors and surrounds, and carved marble and wood chimney pieces in numerous rooms. West of the north wing lies an octagonal room created by Wyatt, featuring a ribbed vaulted ceiling. A large central room in the east wing contains polychrome painted decoration in Pompeian style, probably dating from around 1835 when the MP and collector Thomas Potter MacQueen was a tenant. North of the west wing is a gallery, now undecorated. The east and south ranges retain medieval moulded timbers above central rooms, originally open to the roof.

The building is a Scheduled Ancient Monument.