Monks Horton Priory

Monks Horton Priory is a Grade I listed building comprising fragments of a Cluniac priory, now used as a house. The priory was founded as a cell of the Priory of St. Pancras in Lewes, Sussex, dedicated to St. John the Evangelist, with its foundation confirmed by Papal Bull in 1144. It was dissolved in 1536.

The visible remains include the church (dating to the late 12th century, around 1175), the west range of the cloisters (earlier 12th century but remodelled in the 14th century), and a 16th-century addition. The buildings underwent restoration and additions between 1912 and 1914 by architect G. Hornblower, with further early 20th-century additions to the east.

The structures are constructed of ragstone with ashlar dressings. The 16th-century north addition features flint on the ground floor and close-studded timber framing on the first floor.

The west range presents a two-storey elevation with an attic storey. The west elevation features chamfered stone string-courses passing over buttresses below the first-floor windows, with a nicked and chamfered string-course interrupted by buttresses mid-way up the first floor. Five pilaster buttresses with shouldered tops (possibly renewed or extended) support the elevation, with a broader buttress at the junction of the west range and the 16th-century addition. The south gable end, rebuilt in 1912-14, has a stone-coped gable with finial. The 16th-century north addition is gabled at right-angles to the west range with notably lower eaves. A corbelled brick stack with stone dressings rises from the first floor of the gable end of the 16th-century section, while another stack is located towards the north end of the west range. A stone ridge stack with octagonal flues, partly of early 20th-century date, stands to the right of centre. Early 20th-century additions feature various stone stacks and two gabled dormers.

Fenestration is irregular, with seven stone first-floor windows alternating with buttresses. The 16th-century addition has a truncated four-light 15th-century mullioned and transomed window with cinquefoil-headed lights. The north end room of the west range contains a two-light mullioned window with rounded hollow-chamfered lights and a squared hoodmould. Five cusped four-light mullioned and transomed windows with squared heads and hoodmoulds are present, four of which date to the 14th century, with one to the south of the ridge stack being a 20th-century replacement of a blocked round-headed opening. Early 20th-century ground-floor windows follow a similar style. A narrow blocked round-headed opening, possibly for a garderobe or external staircase, breaks the lower string-course at first-floor level, with a blocked medieval opening possibly indicating a doorway below. A blocked ground-floor doorway, now a window, stands immediately north of the ridge stack.

The north elevation of the 16th-century section is jettied, featuring a three-light leaded casement on the first floor. An early 20th-century four-centred arched stone doorway with a squared hoodmould and boarded door has been added where the section was formerly without one.

The west end of the church displays the south side of a triple-shafted west doorway with foliated capitals and moulded abaci. The base of the arch features doubly zig-zagged inner orders with palmettes in semicircles to the outer order. Bases of shafts are visible for the south side of the west window above. A canted wall with a blank torus-moulded arch connects to the outer shaft of the south side of the portal porch, which bears a scrolled foliated capital and moulded abacus. The abacus continues as a string, linking with the abaci of the inner doorway. Above the outer shaft, the springing of the outer archway of the west window is visible. Substantial remains of the south-west corner of the nave survive, including an angle shaft towards the portal and blank arcading to the west face. The west end of the south aisle, level with the inner west doorway of the nave, is visible from within the 16th-century addition.

The interior of the west end of the church features moulded blank arcading on the west face and south return face of the nave and on the west face of the south aisle, with foliated capitals to shafts and linked moulded abaci. The south-west corner of the nave contains an angle shaft. Two remaining upper tiers of arcading are less ornate. A tall round-headed west window opens to the south aisle.

The north face of the west range has a chamfered plinth lower than that of the nave. A round-headed ground-floor door of two orders is set towards the west side, with an outer frieze of lozenges (restored). Attached shafts with bell bases and broad-leaved capitals flank the doorway.

Within the church interior, a spiral stone staircase is located at the south-west end of the nave, entered from the south aisle. A small scalloped capital (shaft head) with a nicked string survives on a fragment of wall between the nave and south aisle.

The west range interior contains a round-headed ground-floor doorway at the north end of the east wall with two shallow orders and outer cable moulding, springing from chamfered imposts (restored). A plain-chamfered stone door head, possibly of 14th-century date, opens to the south wall of the same north end room. The first-floor room above has two blocked doorways to the north wall, one pointed-arched and moulded, both probably associated with the 16th-century addition, and a low pointed-arched hollow-chamfered doorway with broach stops to the west wall (also visible externally).

The next room to the south on the first floor has blocked hollow-chamfered pointed-arched stone doorways to the north and south. Stone seats are built into two west windows. A 15th-century shafted stone fireplace on the east wall features a moulded segmental arch, squared head with panelled and quatrefoiled spandrels, brattished cornice, stone curb, and tapering stone flue. Moulded stud walls to the north and south and a moulded wooden cornice and beams are present. The ground-floor north room has moulded joists. Blocked east windows occupy each of these two first-floor rooms. The roof is constructed with plain crown-posts, sous-laces, and ashler-pieces. A 20th-century ground-floor fireplace beneath the medieval one incorporates a re-used 17th-century term and overmantel panel. A moulded axial beam and joists and 20th-century plaster frieze are present in the same room. The south end room on the ground floor was panelled in 1912-14 with 17th-century panelling salvaged from a demolished house nearby. 20th-century stone doorways in a medieval style have been inserted.