St Nicholas (Priory) Middle School

The building is the Great Hall of the domestic range of a Benedictine Priory, founded in 1101 by Bishop Herbert de Losinga. The hall was significantly enlarged in 1260 and rebuilt around 1300. It was restored and extended in 1853 by JH Hakewill, with further extensions to the east in 1947. The fabric is primarily knapped flint with ashlar dressings, under machine-tiled roofs.

The hall itself is located within the north range and is a single-story structure with two reticulated two-light windows on both the north and south sides. To the west are moulded and arched doorways, remnants of a former screens passage. The south side features stepped buttresses, and both sides display a worn ashlar cornice with traces of carved heads. A gabled roof tops the hall.

Extending south from the east end is a music room, added in 1853, constructed from knapped flint with ashlar dressings. It is a single-story building rising to two stories at the north end. A two-story entrance porch is centrally located on the south side, featuring double doors at ground level and a two-light reticulated window above. To the right of the porch are two two-light, cusped windows set within depressed arches and a three-light window with a vesica in the south gable. To the left of the porch, an arched doorway and paired lancet windows are present on each floor. The north gable is lit by paired trefoiled lancets on each floor, with an encircled quatrefoil at the gable apex.

A former museum, dating to the late 19th century, is situated to the west of the hall. It consists of a square plan, two stories, with a flint ground floor and a half-timbered upper floor, accessible via a steel staircase, and topped with a pyramid roof. A two-story extension, built in 1853, adjoins the west gable of the hall, with square-headed lancets on the ground floor of the north face, arched lancets above, and a four-light reticulated window to the west.

The interior of the hall is open to the roof and entered from the music room through a multiply-moulded arched doorway, featuring a square hood-mould with shields in the spandrels, and two 19th-century windows above. Five screens passage doorways remain at the west end, all with multiple mouldings and arched openings; only the central doorway has a short ogee arch rising to a string course, the others being stilted. The roof, dating to 1853, includes principals, two tiers of purlins with arched windbraces and collars.