Priest'S House

The Priest’s House is a house dating back to the late 15th or early 16th century, with a small extension added in the 18th century. It is located on the east side of Smallhythe Road, and is likely to have been rebuilt following a fire in 1514 that affected the adjoining church and other village properties. Smallhythe had a shipbuilding industry in the later Middle Ages, and it is believed that Sir Robert Brygantyne, a Clerk of Ships to Henry VII and Henry VIII, lived and worked here, possibly supervising the design and construction of the 'Mary Rose'. The building was marked as a vicarage on Ordnance Survey maps from 1870 and 1898.

From 1899, the house was occupied by Edy Craig, daughter of the actress Ellen Terry, who lived here within the grounds of her mother’s home, Smallhythe Place. Craig, a theatre producer, director, and costumier, was also involved in the suffrage movement. She lived in a relationship with Chris St John and Tony Atwood, and the house became a place of refuge for suffrage activists and women with same-sex relationships, including Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, and Radclyffe Hall. After Ellen Terry’s death in 1928, Craig turned Smallhythe Place into a museum and established the Barn Theatre Society.

The house is constructed of close-studded timber-framing with rendered infill, with the 18th-century extension being tile-hung. The steeply pitched hipped roof is tiled, with gablets, an off-centre brick ridge chimneystack and an external brick chimneystack to the north-east. The plan is of a two-storey jetty house of three bays with a later L-shaped wing to the north-east.

The west or entrance front has three casement windows with small square panes. One window features wooden mullions and a moulded bressumer. It also has two obtusely pointed doorways with carved spandrels. The north side retains three original blocked window openings and is tile-hung in its eastern portion. The south end is weatherboarded. The east side displays exposed curved wind-braces to the upper floor. The Priest's House and St John the Baptist's Church form a group.