The Monastery

The Monastery is a house, originally a farmhouse, and possibly a manor house or grange, dating to the early 14th century. It has been altered in the 17th and 18th centuries and restored in 1965. The house is constructed of coursed squared limestone with a 20th-century plain-tile roof, stone end stacks, and a stone ridge stack to the porch. It is a hall house with two and a half storeys and three and a half bays.

The facade features a glazed door to the cross passage, which has a roll-mould and hollow-chamfered doorway, set within a two-storey gabled porch located to the left of the centre. The porch contains a richly moulded doorway with a hood mould and sculpted head label stops, a sexpartite vault with long chamfered ribs, and a large foliage boss. A one-light window above the doorway has a pointed trefoil head and hood mould. A two-light window to the left side has broken Decorated tracery, diagonal buttresses, and a stone-coped gable with kneelers. Two two-light hall windows are to the right of the porch; the one to the upper end is wider and slightly lower, both featuring straight heads, hood moulds, restored tracery with pointed trefoil headed lights and transoms. A service bay to the left of the porch has two-light leaded windows to the ground and first floors, with wood lintels, and incorporates a stair turret in the angle with a window displaying a pointed head. This service bay is further characterized by a diagonal buttress and stone-coped gable with kneelers. An offset buttress sits between the hall windows. A 20th-century single-storey lean-to extension has been added to the rear.

Inside, wave moulded stone doorways are found in the wall dividing the cross passage from the service bay; one leads to the service bay and the other, narrower, to a stone spiral stair leading to a chamber above and a small room over the porch. A similar doorway at the upper end of the hall originally led to a presumed parlour or solar. Surviving elements include timber posts to the spere. The substantially original roof features a two and a half bay hall roof that is separated from the service end roof by a stone cross wall. Additional features are arch-braced spere and intermediate arch-braced trusses to the hall roof, an angle-braced arcade plate, and wind-braced purlins.