Priory Church of St Margaret of Antioch is a Grade I listed building in the East Cambridgeshire local planning authority area, England. First listed on 1 December 1951. A Medieval Church.

Priory Church of St Margaret of Antioch

WRENN ID
forgotten-postern-ivory
Grade
I
Local Planning Authority
East Cambridgeshire
Constituency
Ely and East Cambridgeshire MP: Charlotte Cane (LD)
Country
England
Date first listed
1 December 1951
Type
Church
Period
Medieval
Address
Priory Church of St Margaret of Antioch, Church Street, Isleham
OS grid reference
TL 642 743
Coordinates
52.34264, 0.40964
Source
Historic England listing

Also on this page: flood risk · radon risk · weather exposure · detailed attributes ↓

Description

The Priory Church of St. Margaret of Antioch is a small Benedictine priory built around 1080-90 by Count John and given to the abbey of St. Jacut in Brittany. It has since been used as a barn and is now cared for by the Department of the Environment. Despite some restoration, the priory remains largely intact and is a rare example of Romanesque architecture.

The walls are primarily made of clunch laid in a herringbone pattern, with a Barnack limestone plinth and dressings around the door and window openings. The roofs have been rebuilt, with the nave's roof raised. The layout includes a nave, choir, and apsed sanctuary, which originally featured a semi-domical roof. The west end displays two 16th-century buttresses made of flint with red brick quoins and a single round-headed lancet window. The barn doors in the north and south walls of the nave likely date from the 16th century. The south doorway of the choir and most window openings are from the 13th century and feature Caernarvon heads. The apse has original pilaster buttresses made of Barnack stone.

Inside, there is a round-headed choir arch that is double recessed and unmoulded, supported by responds with two attached half-round columns that have cushion capitals and splayed bases. There are vacant nook shafts on the west side. Although the sanctuary arch has been demolished, the rectangular piers remain with moulded capitals and bases. At the west end of the nave, there are three bullseye window openings.

Local climate

Priory Church of St Margaret of Antioch sits in one of the driest parts of the UK, with an average of 700 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 91% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 89% of listed buildings.

It experiences an average of 31 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 60% of listed buildings. Of these, 15 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.

Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.

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