The Priory

The Priory is a house dating from around 1500, with extensions made in the late 16th century, late 18th century, and late 19th century. It features a timber frame that is partly exposed, with plaster infill, and has extensions that are tile hung on a brick base. The roofs are plain tiled. The building has a complex construction history, originally serving as a hall house, which was later extended with a lobby entry wing and further additions in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The principal front is formed by the 16th-century lobby entry range, which has two storeys and an attic on a plinth. The first floor is adorned with ornamental tile hanging, and the roof features a stack to the right topped with an iron weather vane dated 1791, as well as an arched recessed panelled stack to the left and three hipped dormers. The first floor includes four mullioned and transomed casements, while the ground floor has four 20th-century copies of these windows, along with two 4-light 20th-century casements and a panelled door set in an 18th-century style doorcase with reeded pilasters and a flat hood.

The right return elevation showcases the gable ends of the front and 18th-century rear ranges, which include large 19th-century canted bays on the ground floor. The earliest range, visible at the rear, is two storeys high with a close-studded frame featuring jowled posts, a steeply pitched hipped roof with gablets, and a tall late 16th-century stack. Inside, the front range has a staggered purlin roof, and records from the Rochester Diocesan archives indicate that it was re-roofed in 1728 when the property was divided into two cottages. The interior retains many early 18th-century features, including a bolection-moulded fireplace, a turned baluster staircase, panelled doors, cupboards, and a powder closet, along with reeded surrounds to the upper fireplaces. The building was formerly a parsonage and is likely to have been a pre-Reformation grange, having been renamed in 1868 when it passed into private ownership.