Priory Gate

This is a former gatehouse to a Dominican Priory, now a house. It dates to approximately 1500, with alterations and additions from the 18th century and the mid-20th century. The building is timber framed and stands two storeys high.

The front of the building presents two distinct phases. To the right is the original gatehouse, displaying exposed close studding and a plain tiled roof. The jettied first floor is supported by solid brackets rising from buttress shafts with carved capitals. There is a moulded and embattled mid rail (except in the right-hand bay), a four-centred arched carriage entrance that is now blocked, incorporating good foliage-carved spandrels. An adjacent pedestrian entrance has a renewed four-centred arch above which is a range of plank and muntin panels. The entrance has 20th-century boarded and battened doors. The jetty over this entrance has been cut back and replaced with a plain tiled pent roof, and the structure above now forms part of the circa 1830 addition. This later work is rendered with a slated roof and a chimney stack at the gable end. Both phases feature twelve-pane and sixteen-pane sash windows in flush frames. The rear is also rendered, with 20th-century casement windows.

Inside, a continuous jetty extends to the former rear wall of the gatehouse. An intact rear carriageway arch is present, similar to the front but without carved spandrels. The feet of two posts in the rear wall retain cranked-down braces, which were designed to protect them from wheeled traffic - a rare survival. Evidence suggests similar braces were present in the front wall. Both entrances have chamfered spine beams with run-out stops and plain, closely-spaced joists; there is no firm evidence of partitioning between them. To the right of the carriage entrance is a single-bay room, likely for a porter, containing a blocked diamond-mullioned window in the side wall, a ceiling with a large trimmed stair trap, and an altered rear wall. There is some heavy first floor studding, along with two renewed diamond-mullioned windows. One open roof truss features a cambered tie beam and long braces forming a four-centred arch (one brace is missing). A second truss, also apparently open, had shorter braces, which are now missing. The roof is a crown-post roof, with plain posts and two-way plank-like bracing to the collar purlin, mostly intact coupled rafters.