Priory of the Most Holy Trinity

The Priory of the Most Holy Trinity is a large group of 19th-century buildings serving as a priory and convalescent hospital, now a priory and private nursing home. It was constructed in phases, with five different architects involved.

The front entrance section, begun in 1861 and later continued by Sir George Gilbert Scott, is in an Early English transitional style. It is built of snecked, random rubble with ashlar dressings, and is single-storey with a coped gable on the left end. There are five chimney shafts on a rectangular stack at the right end, and nine pointed windows with plate tracery. A gabled dormer breaks the eaves on the left, with two similar dormers on the right. A rectangular chimney stack with a turret projects between the ninth and eighth bays. A single-storey porch is located on the left, and a single-storey, three-bay addition with two gables extends to the left of the porch.

The south wing and tower, designed by Leonard Stokes in 1901, are constructed of coursed rubble with ashlar dressings, featuring a steeply pitched roof and three pairs of stone chimneys with angle pilasters and cornice heads. The west front presents an irregular facade with two broad, flat buttresses on the right. It includes leaded casement windows of 2:3:5 and six-lights, with two bays projecting and a wide dormer at first floor level, together with four hipped gabled dormers, one being double. The eastern front of this wing incorporates banded stonework to blend with the chapel. A clock tower positioned in the re-entrant angle has an open lantern with sloping sides and a weathervane.

The chapel, designed by William Butterfield in 1877, extends eastward and is built of snecked random rubble with ashlar dressings and a coped, gabled roof. It comprises a nave, north and south aisles, transepts, and a chancel, with a plinth, string at the base of the buttresses, round headed windows to the nave and chancel, circular windows with quatrefoils, and a light clerestory. The interior features red and white stone. The nave is in the Norman style, while the chancel and transepts are in the Early English style. Stained glass windows are the work of Gibbs and Comper.

The Lady Chapel, added in 1935 by Mitchel and Bridgewater, adjoins the chapel on its eastern end with a two-storey link and a five-light oriel window with trefoiled heads on the first floor. It is built of ashlar with a gabled roof, featuring five bays of pointed windows at the upper level and square ground floor windows. A buttress is positioned between the first and second and the fourth and fifth bays. The interior is plain.

The Priory was established by the Society of the Holy Trinity, founded by Priscilla Lydia Sellon, a friend of Pusey’s. The Society began in Devonport in 1848 and constructed St Dunstan's Abbey in Plymouth in 1850.