Naish Priory, including attached Priory Cottage and north boundary railings

Naish Priory, including attached Priory Cottage and north boundary railings

This is a substantial house, despite its name, rather than a priory. It dates from around 1400, with additions from the 19th and 20th centuries. The building is constructed of local stone rubble with Ham stone dressings, with stone slate and plain clay tile roofs between coped gables and stone chimney stacks, some octagonal with quatrefoil panel decoration.

The house comprises three distinct medieval portions. The east wing functioned as a gatehouse with a chapel above it. The centre is a minor single-storey link that was raised in the 19th century. The west wing may have been the Guest House. No trace remains above ground of the main Hall. The north front is now two storeys with an attic to the west wing, without any regular bay pattern.

The gatehouse has a pointed 15th-century moulded arched doorway with label, though the stops are badly eroded. The doors are a very fine pair from the late 15th century, featuring six-panel applied sub-arcuated tracery and a central arched wicket (a matching pair from the south side is now at Taunton Museum). Above this is an angled oriel window with one-two-one cinquefoil cusped lights, miniature battlements and 19th-century pinnacles over a quatrefoil panel band. The underside has two fan vaults with bosses that cut into the door label. At ground floor level to the right is a two-cinquefoil cusped arched light window under a square label. The gatehouse has corner offset buttresses.

The central unit has three windows—two below and one above—near copies of the gatehouse windows but from the 19th century, separated by a string course. The upper window is set into a simple gable with cross and urn finials. The west wing is taller and may be an earlier building. At ground floor it has a two-light window similar to those of the centre wing. Above this, off-centre, is a single cinquefoil cusped arched light under a square label, and above that a plain rectangular window. To the right of the building are two simple charfered narrow rectangular stairlights. The corner has angled offset buttresses, with a plain rectangular window with trefoil head at first floor level.

From the west wing, a 1910 wing projects southwards, now known as Priory Cottage and historically tenanted. It is smaller in scale but designed in harmony with the older sections. The next section of the south elevation is late 19th century, followed by a projecting stair wing from around 1820. The east gable has a two-light mullioned and transomed window of very early 15th-century type, crowned by an apparently 15th-century octagonal chimney.

Along the north facade, approximately 1.5 metres from the house, wrought iron railings of around 1820 run between returns at each end. The railings are about 500 millimetres high with collared gently spiked tops, set on a rubble stone wall about 700 millimetres high.

The interior has been much modified with work of many periods. In the east wing, at ground floor, the rear gateway arch and jambs are panelled. The east room has a blocked four-centred doorway in the east wall and an inserted fireplace in the north wall. The chapel ceiling and roof above are considerably restored, and the south wall of this room contains a squint window. The centre wing is late 19th century in character. The west wing has simple collar beam trusses with straight principals having curved undersides and curved windbraces.

The house was probably built between 1400 and 1410 by a member of the Courtenay family, who had court and ecclesiastical connections, particularly with Henry IV and Joan of Navarre, and are represented on corbel heads to the east gable windows. Tradition speaks of a ruined portion, possibly the hall, with fragments said to have been used in West Coker Hall between 1839 and 1842.