Conishead Priory

Conishead Priory is a country house, now a Buddhist monastery, built on the site of a former Augustinian priory. The main building dates from 1821 to 1836, with extensions in 1853, and was designed by Philip Wyatt, who was later succeeded by George Webster for Colonel Braddyll. The house is constructed of rendered brick, limestone, and sandstone with slate roofs. It is a large-scale building in a hybrid Gothic style, exhibiting an irregular plan, numerous pointed arches, traceried windows, pierced battlemented parapets, steep gables, and panelled octagonal chimneys.

The main entrance front is asymmetrical and features a three-storey gatehouse-type porch with gable and spired turrets, an ogee-headed doorway with flanking niches, a large four-light traceried window on the first floor, and a rose window above. To the left are two unequal gabled wings – one with a large pointed arched window and the other with a two-storey bay window and a pointed light on the third storey. To the right of the entrance, the west wing is a long, single-storey wing with four large two-light pointed arched windows and clerestory lights behind a parapet. A wing projecting to the north-west ends in a gatehouse tower dated 1853, constructed in the same style with four storeys, and incorporating service quarters and stables. The south front is symmetrical and features three gables.

The interior is notable for a plaster-vaulted corridor that runs from the east entrance towards the west. On the north side, a screen of three arches leads into a stair hall containing an imperial staircase with alternate turned and barley-sugar balusters, illuminated by a stained glass window by Wailes. Adjacent to the north side of the corridor is the double-height entrance hall, which was under repair in November 1991. It is said to contain a west window by Willement, and on the first floor, a wooden screen with Perpendicular tracery taken from the chapel at Samlesbury Hall. The corridor then continues west, with cloister windows on the north side displaying Perpendicular tracery. To the south of the corridor, the dining room is lined with panelling and has a Gothic fireplace in brown marble with a carved oak overmantel. A room at the north-east end of the corridor also features an elaborate marble Gothic fireplace and an oak overmantel. On the first floor, the Oak Room is lined with woodwork taken from Samlesbury Hall in 1834, including a chimneypiece dated 1623. A previous house on the site was demolished in 1821.