St Osyth's Priory: The Abbot's Lodging and South Wing, the Darcy Clock Tower and C18 House (formerly listed as the Convalescent Home).

St Osyth's Priory comprises the Abbot's Lodging and South Wing of 1527, built for Abbot Vyntoner, the South Wing extended and remodelled in the mid-16th century by Lord Darcy who also built the Clock Tower at the east elevation, and an 18th-century house attached to the west of the Abbot's Lodging, built by the 3rd Earl Rochford probably in the 1720s. The Abbot's Lodging, South Wing and 18th-century house were remodelled and extended by Sir John Johnson in the 1860s. The 18th-century house was used as a convalescent home from 1948 and housed the art collection of Somerset De Chair until his death in the 1990s. In 2012 the 18th-century house was vacant, but the Abbot's Lodging and South Wing were in use as dwellings.

The buildings form an evolved T-shaped plan. The Abbot's Lodging comprises an east-west range and extended South Wing. The octagonal Clock Tower is attached to the east of the South Wing. The mid-19th-century service wing is attached to the east of the Abbot's Lodging and the 18th-century house to its west.

Materials and Construction

The Abbot's Lodging is constructed of red brick with black brick diapering and stone and brick dressings. Lord Darcy's extension to the South Wing and the Clock Tower are of red brick with septaria and ashlar chequer work. The 18th-century house is of red brick. The roofs are slated except for the 18th-century house which is tiled.

The Abbot's Lodging

The Abbot's Lodging is a two-storey building which, with the exception of the principal south elevation, was entirely rebuilt in 1866. The hipped, slated roofs have pairs of tall, moulded brick stacks. Two chimney stacks break through the parapet and band, each with two ornately moulded and capped shafts, and there is a similar shaft to the east wall. The moulded parapet has a band of cusped brick panelling below it.

The south elevation centres on a broad and deeply moulded stone four-centred archway at ground floor with stop-moulded jambs and defaced, cusped and carved spandrels each bearing a shield—the western one apparently featuring a beast with a scroll. The main archway contains a moulded, segmental pointed doorway with carved spandrels and a double panelled door. Flanking doorways stand on either side—the eastern is modern but the western is contemporary, with a tun and crown carved in the spandrels. Above the doorways are two-light windows under square heads with hood moulds.

Above the main archway stands a large oriel window of 16 lights, much repaired externally in the 19th century except for the moulded and carved head and the panelled and carved base and corbelling. The head has a band of early Renaissance ornament with foliage and small nude figures. The base has two bands of panelling. The upper band consists of cusped squares enclosing shields and trefoil-headed panels with Tudor roses. The shields display: crossed keys and sword of Saints Peter and Paul with a papal tiara in chief; three crowns and a sword palewise for Saint Osyth; a crowned heart pierced by three swords and encircled by a crown of thorns; a crowned monogram of the Virgin; a dimidiated rose and pomegranate, crowned; a stag supporting a scutcheon charged with three crowns; a rebus of Abbot John Vyntoner and Bouchier. Below this, the lower band has lozenge-shaped, cusped panelling with a carved flower in the middle of each main panel. The moulded corbelling has two bands of carved foliage each with shields. The upper band contains six shields all defaced except a crowned M and a dolphin with a mitre in chief. The lower band has running vine ornament with remains of lettering intertwined, apparently the name Johannes Vyntoner but much broken, and five shields: Saints Peter and Paul; three crowns; chalice and host; vine and tun for Vyntoner; three combs for Tunstall, Bishop of London.

The treatment of the 19th-century phase is consistent with that of 1527—red brick, black brick diapering, stone dressings to square and pointed-arch window openings, some with hood moulds. The parapets and bands of the south elevation follow through to the mid-19th-century garden (north) elevation, dominated by a projecting two-storey buttressed bay which has a central two-storey bay window designed in imitation of the oriel on the south elevation, repeating the carved stone bands with shields and cusping. There are tall windows on the return walls. The 18th-century house is attached to the west and to the east the parapeted, two-storey service wing built of machine-made bricks with Gothic style tracery to the various-light stone mullion windows with hood moulds.

The interior fittings and fixtures are largely mid-19th century and comprise timber, richly decorated dado panelling, architraves, a main staircase, doorcases and fireplaces. The large ground-floor room of the Lodging has a painted ceiling and plain wooden fittings, but the first-floor room is more ornate, lit by the oriel window to the south and bay windows to the north. The apparently wooden cross beams with their ornate wooden brackets presumably hide the iron girders which span this broad space. The panels within the ceiling were painted with flowers by Edward Ladell. The elaborately decorated wooden fittings, all in the Gothic Revival style, include dado panelling, pointed-arch doorcases, shutter boxes and an exuberant chimney piece. The room also retains a set of fine Gothic Revival-style wall gasoliers.

Some early 16th-century fixtures remain, principally the reveals and rear-arch of the oriel window which have rich cusped panelling in stone with 88 small shields. These shields bear the various devices of Abbot Vyntoner, Saint Osyth, Tunstall Bishop of London, Henry VIII, the later arms of the Abbey—parted cheveronwise, in chief a ring between a mitre and a crozier and the arms of Bourchier, Tunstall, Henry VIII, France, and so on. There are also monograms of the Virgin, Vyntoner, the five wounds and two small standing figures, probably of canons. A series of four shields on each side give the date 1527, one in Roman and one in Arabic numerals.

The interior of the service wing was extensively remodelled in the mid-20th century, most of the fixtures and fittings dating from that period.

The South Wing

The South Wing incorporates the northern end of the 13th-century cellarer's range and part of the frater wall of the Priory, reconfigured by the first Lord Darcy after the dissolution. The façade faces west onto the court and comprises two sections: a lower two-storey section of 1527 to the north that was part of the Abbot's Lodging, and a taller two-and-a-half storey mid-16th-century section to the south.

The 1527 phase has a stone-coped parapet to a slated gable roof with two pediments and moulded brick chimney stacks with fluted pots. The roof is of the mid-19th century, rebuilt by Sir John Johnson. On the ground floor are two four-centred arch door openings with moulded brick surrounds, trellis-carved timber doors with stone-mullion lights above. The ground-floor stone-mullion windows are set in partially blocked four-centred arch openings with moulded brick heads. On the first floor there are four square-headed window openings with stone-mullion windows and hood moulds. Above the left-hand door is a blocked window opening.

The mid-16th-century bays have a round-arched doorway set in a straight stone head and another in a stone pointed-arch head to the ground floor, the latter leading down into the 13th-century cellarer's range. On the first and attic floors are various-light windows with stone mullions and surrounds. Two gables project at the attic storey, each with three-light mullion windows. There are moulded brick and carved stone chimney stacks to the roofs—the north end stack is built of septaria and ashlar chequer work typical of the Darcy building phases.

The south elevation comprises a stone section with a gable and parapet in the distinctive Darcy chequer work and two contemporary carved-stone chimney stacks. The gable has two narrow, shouldered, angled buttresses between which is a projection with an embattled top, with stone-mullioned windows above and to the left.

The east elevation has been much patched and altered but retains 13th-century fabric of the cellarer's range and frater on the ground floor. The first floor is multi-phased, with mid-19th-century brick at the south end and, at the north end, 13th-century and mid-16th-century randomly coursed septaria and ashlar with stone quoins and mullioned windows with stone surrounds and hood moulds.

At the ground floor at the south end is a mid-16th-century doorway with double hollow-chamfered jambs and a four-centred arch with a square head and a hood-mould. To the right, the medieval fabric is patched. A second part-glazed, part-trellis-carved door with a rebuilt four-centred brick-arch head has relict stone quoins to the jambs. Projecting immediately to the right is the square base of the mid-16th-century Clock Tower, partly built across a chamfered archway at the west end of the 13th-century frater.

The interior plan-form, fixtures and fittings of the South Wing are mid-19th century with the exception of the two 13th-century vaulted cellars, roofed with barrel-vaults and divided into five bays by chamfered ribs. The wall between the cellars has an archway with jambs and segmental-pointed head of two chamfered orders. A similar archway in the south wall has been blocked on the outside.

The Clock Tower

The Clock Tower was built by Lord Darcy in the mid-16th century. It is faced with chequer-work in septaria and ashlar with flint galleting. It has a square base with buttresses but is octagonal above in two stages. The windows are of two four-centre arched lights in square heads with mullions. The tower is surmounted by a late 18th-century octagonal wooden cupola with arched openings and a leaded, domed roof topped by a finial. The cupola has 18th-century copper clock dials on the south and west faces.

The room in the first floor has a mid-16th-century fireplace. The cupola is accessed by ladder. The late 18th-century clock mechanism remains at the second stage.

The 18th-century House

The 18th-century house is a two-storey range with a parapet and a tiled gable roof with ornately moulded brick chimney stacks. The south façade has two brick bands and a central two-storey bow window with French windows at the ground floor and 8-over-8 hornless sash windows with straight brick heads above. The windows at the first and ground floors are the same. Further to the east (right) is a modern inserted French window. The parapet and banding continue to the north (garden) elevation which has an off-centre two-storey porch on its garden (north) elevation. The entrance door has a four-centred arch, stone head with carved spandrels and a hood mould, with an arched sash window above. The ground and first floors have 8-over-8 hornless sash windows with straight brick heads. The west elevation is mid-19th century and has a bow window.

The plan of this building consists of a corridor and stair on the north side and a range of rooms to the south. The building has been much altered internally. Two 18th-century chimney pieces survive. One room has dado panelling made from 18th-century box pews, probably introduced in the late 20th century when the rooms in this section of the house were radically redecorated. One of the windows contains four 18th-century painted glass panels depicting various female occupations. In the rear corridor and lobby, lit by a skylight, is the reset early 16th-century timber panelling removed from the Abbot's Lodging. These carved oak panels have vine ornament and double ogee enrichment, and a large number have shields with the initials N, I, H, V, O, A, S and T, various animals and other symbols.