The Priory

The Priory is a gentleman's mansion house built on the site of a small Augustinian hospital. It dates from around 1200 and the late 16th century, and was substantially remodelled and extended in the mid-17th century by William Lenthall (Speaker of the House of Commons). It was altered again after 1808 when it was greatly reduced in size. The building is constructed of ashlar and dressed rubble with Cotswold stone roofs.

The house is largely Jacobean in character with fragmentary 13th-century and circa 1580 elements, arranged on a roughly U-shaped plan. It rises to three storeys and an attic. The main elevation features outer gables with steps and cut finials, a central fluted-fan panel with finials, and paired diagonal-shaft chimneys set back on either side. Windows are mullioned, notably very long ones on the first floor. Three-storey outer bays have crenellations dating from the 1580s, which were moved from the south front during the mid-17th-century remodelling (scars remain visible). A central swagger porch with a Corinthian ground floor and Composite first floor displays panels, atlantes, strapwork, a shield motif, and an arched doorway.

The south side features a mid-17th-century six-bay long gallery wing in freestone with arched architraves, scroll keys, and panelled pilasters to the first-floor windows. Bulls-eye windows occupy the ground floor, with a cornice, parapet, weathered verges, and an ashlar chimney above. An 18th-century extension forms an irregular one-and-a-half to two-storey wing, restored in 1923. This includes a cross-mullion window to the first floor right, a Serliana loggia to the right of centre with a shaped gable, and four hipped dormers to the left. The rear of the house is dominated by a taller stair block with two arched windows from the mid-18th century. The south wing was restored by Horniman with Cotswold style and Voyseyish detailing.

The interior preserves three early 13th-century arches and piers in the entrance hall, which also features a 17th-century fireplace. An early to mid-18th-century staircase has three barley-sugar balusters per tread and fluted Corinthian newels beneath an enriched plaster ceiling with high relief rose and pendant. The first-floor ball-room (now a chapel) displays a wide-rib enriched plaster ceiling with pendants and a large fireplace with three spiral pairs of palmette-Ionic columns, a broken segmental pediment, and overmantel carving bearing the Lenthall arms and greyhound crest. The room contains excellent pine panelling. The spine wall at the rear of the front block is fundamentally mediaeval.

The Hospital of St John the Evangelist was first recorded in 1226 and was quite small. Following the Dissolution, it was granted in 1543 to Edmund Harman, one of Henry VIII's barber-surgeons, who appears to have built a mansion here. The Priory was subsequently acquired by Sir Lawrence Tanfield, later Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer and Lord of the Manor of Burford. He entertained King James I here in 1603 and made alterations. William Lenthall purchased The Priory in 1637 and died in 1662, having substantially extended and remodelled it. King Charles II dined here in 1681 while travelling to the Burford Races. After a chequered history including the amputation of outer wings and flattening of the facade in the early 19th century, The Priory was rescued from complete dereliction in 1908 by Colonel de Sales de la Terriere. His work was continued by Emslie John Horniman, who purchased the building in 1912. It is now the Convent of The Community of the Salutation of Our Lady, an enclosed order of Anglican Benedictine nuns, marked by an elegant half-moon yew screen at the entrance. Despite its alterations, it remains a good example of a mid-17th-century gentleman's house.