Kerswell Priory Including Walls Of Walled Garden

Kerswell Priory is a house occupying the site of a Cluniac Priory, founded in the 1120s and dissolved in 1538. Although the building may stand on the site of the north, west and east ranges of the Priory, recent stripping of render from the farmhouse buildings suggests little or no medieval masonry survives. With the exception of a re-sited 12th-century doorframe, the surviving features indicate a late 16th-century core with 17th and 18th-century alterations. The walls are rendered, probably cob and stone, with a slate roof hipped at the ends of the west block, end stacks to the west block, and two axial stacks to the main range.

The building has an overall U-plan: a single-depth range four rooms wide on a west/east axis with south wings at right angles. The centre range contains an unheated room to the east, then two 17th-century parlours, the easternmost re-used as a kitchen. The west room has been re-roofed on a north/south axis, probably as part of 18th-century improvements. The adjacent room in the south-west wing appears to have a pre-18th-century core but these two rooms functioned as the principal entrance block in the 18th century with a passage between them and an 18th-century stair rising from the passage. The south-east wing is unheated and used for storage.

Externally, the building is two storeys. The west front is nearly asymmetrical with three windows and regular fenestration beneath a deep hipped roof. A wide 18th-century six-panel front door with fielded panels, the top panels glazed, and panelled reveals is recessed into a flat-roofed porch on timber posts. The windows are probably 18th-century timber 16-pane sashes except for the first floor left and right, which are 20-pane. The left return (north elevation) has two 20th-century windows at the left end and an 18th or 19th-century timber sash to the right. In the centre are two first-floor and two ground-floor late 17th or 18th-century mullioned windows glazed with square leaded panes. The south elevation has a single-storey lean-to between the wings with one first-floor two-light mullioned window to ground-floor right, now looking into the lean-to. Other windows are mostly 20th-century with loft doors into the south end of each wing.

The interior contains a re-sited 12th-century doorframe from the outshut into the south-east wing, stone with a segmental arched head, zig-zag moulding on the lintel and engaged shafts. A wide two-panel door from the lean-to opens into the right-hand heated room, which has a ceiling of intersecting beams and an open fireplace with a roll-moulded lintel and bread oven. The adjoining room to the west has a circa mid to late 17th-century decorated plaster ceiling with intersecting moulded beams and unusual radiating patterns. The stack appears to have been rebuilt with an altered cornice, and there is an 18th-century cupboard on the south wall. The two rooms in the west block have 18th-century chimney-pieces and panelled shutters. Recent renovations suggest the south-west room may be an 18th-century adaptation of an existing structure rather than an 18th-century addition. An attractive 18th-century stair rises from the passage between the two west rooms, featuring an open string, flat-topped handrail and turned balusters. The south-east wing retains chamfered ceiling beams and a section of plank and muntin screen. Numerous 18th-century six- and two-panel doors are present on the ground and first floors, and an early 18th-century bolection-moulded fireplace appears on the first floor.

The remains of a late 16th-century decorated plaster scheme survive on the east face of the west axial stack. The 'A' frame roof trusses are probably 17th-century. The roofspace is floored and was probably used for servants' accommodation.

A separate building to the south (listed separately) has been identified as the frater of the Cluniac complex. This retained a medieval roof structure until 1984, although the walls have been largely rebuilt in the 19th or 20th century.

The walls to the garden to the north and east are made of probably 18th-century hand-made brick and are included in the listing. Kerswell Priory is an important house not only for its 17th and 18th-century features but for the archaeological interest of the site.