Langston Priory

Langston Priory is a hotel, now a residential home for the elderly, dating to around 1870. It was designed by George Devey for the Third Earl of Ducie, with later alterations made. The building is constructed from rock-faced regularly coursed dressed limestone rubble with roughcast timber framing to the gables and a jettied first floor to the main range. The front has an artificial stone slate roof, while the rear and a low wing retain original stone slates. The design follows a complex plan in a free Tudor style.

The main range features a projecting gabled wing to the left, with a jettied attic supported by a coving. An attic window is a 20th-century casement. Below it is a 2-light flat-faced mullion window to the first floor, and a 3-light flat-faced mullioned and transomed window to the ground floor. Similar mullioned and transomed windows are present on the main range to the left and right of a projecting gabled porch, which has a wide segmental-headed arch with panelled doors and fleur-de-lys pointed strap hinges leading to a lobby. Half-glazed ledged doors open from this lobby. 2-light flat-faced mullion windows illuminate the cellar to the left and right of the entrance. The first floor of the porch has quoin strips and a Venetian window, from which the original glazing has been removed. 3-light casements, also missing their original glazing, are located to the left and right. A slightly later single-storey range attached to the right has a projecting gabled bay with a coving similar to that on the main range’s gabled wing. This bay contains a 5-light mullioned and transomed window – the central light is round-headed and lower. Three 2-light flat-faced mullion windows are to the left, with one to the left and two to the right of a ramped buttress.

A prominent feature is the arrangement of ridge, lateral, and end stacks, all with red brick detached diagonal shafts grouped in twos or threes. Many of these were rebuilt in the late 20th century, replicating the original style. One of the rear ranges includes a semi-circular bread oven projection with a stone slate roof.

Internally, the building has undergone considerable 20th-century alterations, but retains its original dog-leg staircase with turned balusters. The hotel’s location near a major railway junction meant it served as the headquarters for the local hunt. It originally had stabling for 23 hunters, and guests of the Earl of Ducie, along with other visitors from London, would bring their horses by train for weekend hunting expeditions.