St Philip'S Priory

St Philip’s Priory is a house dating from the mid-17th century, significantly altered and extended in the 18th and late 19th centuries and now serving as a Servite priory. The original fabric is limestone rubble, with squared and dressed limestone to the left extension. The roof is gabled, with stone slate tiles and concrete tiles to the rear, and features mid-18th century ashlar end stacks and a late-19th century stack of squared and coursed stone.

The main front, dating from the 17th and 18th centuries, is two storeys and five bays, with a projecting central gable of two bays. The gable has a raised, semi-circular arched architrave above a mid-18th century fielded eight-panelled door with fanlight, and late-18th century six-pane sashes in raised architraves. The outer bays also have mid-18th century six-pane sashes with thick glazing bars. Around 1800, a two-storey canted bay window of limestone ashlar with raised storey bands and six-pane sashes was added to the left. The rear of the property mirrors this design.

A left extension, built around 1896-9 by Sir Leonard Stokes, is two storeys and an attic, with a four-window range, horned four-pane sashes in raised architraves, and a bullseye window in the central gable.

The interior of the original house showcases a stone-flagged central hall with a chamfered beam, stop-chamfered spine beams with run-out stops, bolection-moulded panelling, a 18th-century panelled door, and an early-18th century bolection-moulded fireplace. A dog-leg staircase with turned balusters on a closed string leads to a landing on the left. The rooms contain early 19th-century plaster cornices and architraves, alongside painted shutters depicting the Order of St. Francis. A reset late-16th century doorway is found in a central rear room, featuring Tudor roses carved on the moulded architrave. The roof is a butt-purlin design.

The house was purchased by Charles Robertson in 1896 and given to the Servites in the same year, as a gesture of gratitude for his conversion to Roman Catholicism facilitated by a Servite Father in 1891.