The Priory

THE PRIORY

A former Church House dating to the early 16th century, converted to a dwelling by the early 18th century and further altered in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The building is located on the west side of Church Street, Rickmansworth.

The structure comprises a four-bay, two-storey building with attics. The timber frame to the first floor is brick infilled, whilst the ground floor is clad in brick. The roof is pitched and tiled with brick chimney stacks. A small addition stands to the west end of the north elevation, with access to ground floor outhouses from the north side only, and a single-storey lean-to addition extends from the west gable end.

The south elevation features four leaded casement windows to the first floor, two with gabled dormers above. The ground floor has two bay windows flanking the front door and a further window to the west. The front door is fitted with margin lights containing decorative leadwork and is topped by a porch hood supported on wooden brackets. Some first-floor timber framing survives on this elevation. The west gable end contains an early 20th-century single-storey lean-to with a hipped tiled roof, above which is a bay window also with a hipped tiled roof, plus an attic window. The east gable end, facing the street, has an early 20th-century three-light Gothic ground floor window with coloured glass shields and diamond leaded panes, and two 20th-century attic windows. Timber framing survives to the first floor, where a lintel possibly indicates the position of an external door. Some of the timber frame and jetty are visible within the sheds added to the north elevation.

The ground floor plan consists of four rooms with the lean-to kitchen addition to the west. The two central rooms were originally the hall. The entrance gives access to the modern hall, which contains a wooden staircase and a false fireplace with wood surround. A chamfered axial beam supporting numbered joists continues into the room immediately to the west, which features a large 16th-century fireplace on its north side. This fireplace has a bressumer with a cambered head and has been reduced in size and filled with 17th-century Dutch tiles. The room to the east of the hall preserves evidence in its beam of a wattle and daub partition, and the joists, like those in the hall, are numbered. The west room contains a rough beam and plastered ceiling. Early 20th-century plank doors are found throughout.

The roof is of tie beam and queen strut construction, with jowelled posts to the tie beams and braces running from post to tie beam. The purlins are chamfered, and there are two pairs of curving windbraces to each bay.

According to the Victoria County History, there was a church house in Rickmansworth which belonged to the townspeople before the Dissolution and was granted to William Tipper and Robert Dawe in 1588–1589. This may refer to The Priory, which by the early 18th century had been converted into a dwelling. The building was originally a four-bay, two-storey structure with a ground floor hall, one room to the west, and two rooms to the east separated by a wattle and daub partition; the east rooms are now combined into one. The hall was heated by a massive external stack to the north side. The house was box framed and jettied to both north and south sides, with its south side ground floor later faced in brick and its first floor framing infilled. Evidence of an earlier door in the framing to the first floor east gable end indicates an entrance from an external stair. The present plan form dates to approximately 1900, when the lean-to kitchen was added to the west elevation and new windows and doors were inserted.