Conishead Priory

ULVERSTON

SD37NW PRIORY ROAD 626-1/2/102 (East side (off)) 02/03/50 Conishead Priory

II*

Country house, now Buddhist monastery, on site of Augustinian Priory. 1821-36, extended 1853. To design by Philip Wyatt and completed by George Webster. For Colonel Braddyll. Rendered brick, limestone, and sandstone, with slate roofs. Built on a vast scale in a hybrid Gothic style with an irregular plan, with many pointed arches and traceried windows, pierced battlemented parapets, steep gables, and panelled octagonal chimneys. The entrance front is very asymmetrical, but has a centre 3-storeyed gatehouse-type porch with gable and spired turrets, an ogee-headed doorway with flanking niches, a large 4-light traceried window on the 1st floor and a rose window above. To the left are 2 (unequal) gabled wings, one with a large pointed arched window, the other with a 2-storeyed bay window and a pointed light on the 3rd storey. To the right of the entrance (west) is a long single-storey wing with 4 large 2-light pointed arched windows, and clerestorey lights behind a parapet. A large wing at the west end projecting northwards ends in a gatehouse tower dated 1853, in the same style, of 4 storeys, and contains service quarters, stables, etc. The south front is symmetrical, with 3 gables. INTERIOR: a plaster-vaulted corridor runs from the east entrance towards the west. On the north side a screen of 3 arches opens into a stair hall with an imperial staircase with alternate turned and barleysugar balusters, lit by a stained glass window by Wailes. Also opening off the north side of the corridor is the double-height entrance hall (under repair at time of survey in November 1991), entered from the north doorway. It is said to have a west window by Willement, and, on the 1st floor, a wooden screen with Perpendicular tracery, taken from the chapel at Samlesbury Hall. The corridor continues towards the west, where it has cloister windows on the north side with 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 has an elaborate marble Gothic fireplace and has an oak overmantel. On the 1st floor the Oak Room is lined with woodwork taken from Samlesbury Hall (near Preston) in 1834,

including a chimneypiece dated 1623. A previous house on this site was demolished in 1821.

Listing NGR: SD3040375826