Prior Park College: The Mansion With Link Arcades

This is a Palladian mansion built between 1735 and 1748 as a large country house, now serving as a school. The building was designed by John Wood the Elder and completed by Richard Jones for Ralph Allen, a prominent entrepreneur who owned the local stone quarries. The portico steps were added around 1834 by HE Goodridge.

Construction and Materials

The mansion is built of fine ashlar stone from Combe Down quarries and has a Westmorland slate roof. The building consists of a central block linked by arcaded quadrants to substantial east and west wings, which are listed separately.

Layout

The house follows a Palladian plan with four main cross walls creating five compartments. A lateral central corridor runs through the building with principal rooms on either side. At the east end, a chapel occupies the full depth through two storeys.

Exterior Description

The mansion has two main storeys, an attic, and a basement.

South (Entrance) Front: The entrance elevation is severely plain, arranged in three groups of five windows. All windows contain twelve-pane sashes set in plain reveals. Ground floor windows sit on a podium band, while basement windows have heavy bars and are set in a narrow sunken area. The centre projects slightly and features a hexastyle portico (six columns across) with giant unfluted Ionic half-columns, a plain pediment, and a full entablature with modillion cornice extending across the entire width and returned to the other three fronts. The basement level has V-joint rustication. The parapet has plain panels between dies on this front, but baluster panels on the other fronts.

The low-pitched hipped roof was completely reconstructed after a fire in 1991. Four very narrow but deep chimney stacks rise from the ridge—the outer stacks are deeper than the inner pair, and the eastern stack has a central open arch over a bell. A balustrade in panels contains the basement area, returns to the portico, and extends at the east end to a broad pathway leading to the former east entrance.

East and West Ends: The returned ends are each arranged in five bays, with a central Palladian window at first floor level. All windows are glazed, though some are blind, and detailed similarly to the north front, including alternating segmental and straight pediments at ground floor level. The east end has earlier and thicker glazing bars than elsewhere. A central pedimented porch features unfluted Ionic columns in-antis (set between projecting walls). The former door is now blocked, but a plain fanlight remains above, and at basement level there is an arched doorway.

North (Garden) Front: The principal north front faces the garden and landscape view. It features a central deep pedimented hexastyle portico with giant unfluted Corinthian columns, doubled at the returns. The elevation is arranged in three groups of five windows, all twelve-pane sashes with moulded architraves and bracketed sills. Ground floor windows have alternating segmental and straight pediments and sill balustrades. The central doorway has glazed doors and a fanlight within a pilaster doorcase with archivolt.

The rusticated basement is fully exposed on this side with small square sashes. Attached to the portico is a grand external staircase with wide stone treads and balustraded handrails with piers carrying urns or carved figures. The flights sweep outward at the bottom level.

Arcades: Attached to each side at basement level is an arcade of seventeen arches. The eighth bay from the house is brought forward with a pediment surmounted by a gladiatorial figure. The walling is heavily V-joint rusticated, with rustication carried to the returns and deep reveals, all with prominent keystones. Some openings contain casements, others sashes. The outer end arcades sweep forward in quadrants and terminate in a straight bay with a blind arch. Originally these arcades connected with porte-cochères providing access to the house. The entire arcade carries a balustraded parapet on a deep plain blocking course. Bays immediately adjoining the mansion on each side have raised flat lead roofs at parapet level.

The rear walls of the arcades are severely plain with square lights—some containing broad stone glazing bars, others blind—and some doorways. This side has no balustrade but high plain parapets. Areas behind the colonnades are contained by retaining walls that ramp down at the east end. On the west side, the wall continues at the upper level to contain a driveway. Part of this wall has an added concrete glacis to the lower third.

Interior

Much of Wood's original interior detail had been removed by 1764, with major losses occurring in an 1836 fire. The principal remaining element from Wood's work is the chapel, though work in his long cross-gallery can also be seen. The basement is fully vaulted in ashlar.

Piano Nobile (Main Floor): The central through-hall features eight large painted Corinthian columns and responds, a stone floor, and a deep fifteen-compartment ceiling. Central doors on each side have rich pilaster cases and friezes with pediments. The former dining room and parlour flanking the north end have fine plaster drops to wood pilasters and coved ceilings. The former drawing room has fine paired fluted wooden Composite pilasters, a modillion cornice, and a central plaster rosette.

The principal staircase is a dogleg open-well stair originally from Hunstrete House (not accessible at time of inspection).

First Floor: The central through-room corresponds with the hall below. It has a fine restored modillion cornice and deep coved ceiling with delicate plasterwork panels in various designs, including musical instruments and a stag's head in high relief. Central doorcases flanked by deep plain niches have fluted Corinthian three-quarter columns with anthemion friezes. In the corners are four doorcases with pediments and pulvinated friezes.

The room in the north-east corner, formerly Bishop Baines's library, also has an enriched coved ceiling with a central rosette. The long gallery, which formerly ran across the central three sections of the north front, is now divided into three separate rooms, but Wood's original paired stone pilasters are still mainly exposed or visible at the inserted partitions.

Chapel: The chapel, with a half-domed apse to the south, remains much as Wood left it. It rises through two storeys with paired pilasters—Ionic below, Corinthian above—and includes a gallery at the north end with a central arched opening.

The attic floor was completely restructured during the 1991-1995 restoration.

Historical Context

This is a major Palladian house derived in inspiration from Colen Campbell's first design for Wanstead House in Essex. The thousand-foot-long front and grandiose porticos on each front represent Ralph Allen building a major architectural statement using stone from his own local quarries. Allen had suffered setbacks in trying to establish Bath stone as a respectable building material. He intended his seat as a rebuff to critics and a demonstration of his own achievement, designed to be visible from the city below.

Wood's original scheme for a range of detached blocks was modified during construction at Allen's insistence. Wood's account of the conception behind "Mr Allen's great house" given in his "An Essay Towards a Description of Bath" is considered problematic. During Allen's lifetime, Prior Park became a renowned seat, frequently visited by Alexander Pope, who advised on the landscape setting.

The house was acquired in 1829 by Dr Baines, Roman Catholic Bishop for the Western District, for use as a seminary (in the east wing) and a boys' school (in the west). Baines's vision for a major Catholic cathedral here was only partly realised. The mansion, used as the Bishop's residence and altered by HE Goodridge, suffered severe fire damage in 1836. During reconstruction, substantial elements from the recently demolished Hunstrete House were incorporated into the interior.

The seminary and school closed in 1856, having exhausted their limited means. The Catholic Bishop of Clifton bought back the property in 1867. The Christian Brothers acquired an interest in 1895 and bought it outright in 1922, transferring the running of the school to a trust in 1981.

Having suffered bomb damage during the Second World War, the building suffered a second major fire in 1991, leading to a major campaign of restoration. The gardens were transferred to the National Trust in 1993.

Prior Park is of outstanding importance as an example of Palladian country house architecture, as the residence of Ralph Allen, for its relationship with its dramatic landscape setting, for its sheer scale, and for its 1830s embellishments showing the revival of English Catholicism.