Priory Farmhouse

Priory Farmhouse

Detached house dating from the 14th and 15th centuries, modified in the 17th and 20th centuries. The building is constructed of ham stone rubble with ashlar dressings, features a thatched roof with plain end gables and stone chimney stacks. It is arranged in an 'L'-plan with two storeys and a five-bay north elevation.

The north elevation displays a plinth and ovolo-mould mullioned windows set in wave-mould recesses with rectangular-leaded panes and iron-framed opening lights. On the first floor, bays 1 to 4 each have 3-light windows with labels set beneath small coped gables. The ground floor has tall 4-light windows with labels in bays 1, 2, and 4. Twentieth-century ovolo-mould artificial stone windows have been added: a single-light in lower bay 1 on the left, and a 2-light with label in lower bay 3 on the right. Bay 5 contains a 3-light window above and a 4-light below, with a 2-light in the short gabled return to the right of bay 5. A projecting chimney stack with offsets stands between bays 2 and 3. An ovolo and wave-mould cambered-arched doorway in a rectangular recess with a square label over frames a 20th-century boarded door at lower bay 3.

Long low single-storey buildings extend northwards from both ends, with Welsh slate roofs to shallow pitch. The more easterly has a stepped coped gable with ball finial; the western block has a plain gable. Neither wing has openings facing the garden forecourt, though the west block has 20th-century windows in its west flank.

The east flank is not fully visible from outside, but the main gable reportedly has a 3-light mullioned window to the ground floor and at first-floor level a 2-light pointed-arched window with 14th or 15th-century tracery and label over. Further mullioned windows appear in the south wall, with lower windows reset into a wall of a lean-to added as a lateral passage.

The interior was extensively altered in the 1960s. Surviving features include chamfered cambered-arched fireplaces in the east and adjoining rooms. One central room has a 4-panel ceiling with deep chamfered beams, though it no longer fits its current space, and a section of panelled reused woodwork exists in the cross passage. At the east end stands what appears to be a private chapel, served by the pointed-arched traceried window. The chapel ceiling features three jointed cruck trusses with some surviving windbraces, highly decorative with added cusping on the centre truss. Several other smoke-blackened trusses survive in the main roof, some originally closed with wattle and daub. It is uncertain whether the roof structure comprises jointed crucks or post and frame; the trusses do not align with the present stone walls, suggesting the house was originally constructed in early cob or timber frame.

The building was originally an open hall house. In the late 17th century it was known as the Home Tenement, acquiring its present name in the late 19th century. It may have predated Hinton House as the Manor House and possibly belonged to Monkton Farleigh Priory.