The Priory

The Priory is a house, now offices, located on St Mary Street in Bridgwater. It represents a complex building evolution spanning the early 18th century to the mid-20th century, with the main block dating to the early 18th century, a late 18th-century left wing, mid and late 19th-century internal alterations, and a mid-20th-century conversion to municipal offices.

The building is constructed in Flemish-bond brick with stone moulded coping to parapets, stone cornices, cills, keystones and plinth. The porch is stone, and there is a wooden cornice to the right-hand block. The roof is slate to the left wing and double-pitched plain tile to the right, with brick stacks to gable ends. The south facade, described from the garden front, is composed of two distinct blocks: the right-hand block is yellow brick, whilst the left is red brick.

The right-hand block of the south facade presents two storeys with attic and a symmetrical five-window range. The stacks to the gable ends of the double-pitched roof are square section with moulded cornices in red brick with yellow brick recessed panels; 20th-century dormers have been added. The wooden cornice, positioned high above a red brick platband, is returned. At the centre of the first floor is a Venetian window with thick glazing bars, a moulded archivolt with stepped keystone, and a pulvinated frieze to the cornices over the side windows. The windows have recessed panels and moulded plinths to pilasters, and the central window contains Gothic glazing bars to a 6/6-pane sash. This is flanked by flat brick arches to 6/6-pane sash windows in forward frames to the right and 9/6-pane sashes with lowered cills to the left, all above the red brick platband. Ground-floor windows, now boarded up, have thick glazing bars.

The red brick left block is set well back, with a hipped slate roof to the right and a gable-end stack to the left. It is two storeys with a four-window range. The three ranges to the left are stepped slightly forward and have flat arches, stepped keystones and bracketed cills to the windows; the cornice is returned to both sides and continues as a brick platband across the right-hand range, which contains the entrance. The first-floor window of this range has been lowered, probably in the late 19th century, to a level corresponding to the older left range, and has a brick cill band spanning the whole block. A projecting Tuscan-style porch is set in the angle between the two blocks. Late 19th-century plate-glass ground-floor windows are boarded up, but wrought-iron catches to former shutters remain.

The early 18th-century street front of the main block in St Mary Street was altered in the late 20th century. It presents two storeys with a symmetrical seven-window range. A 20th-century stucco eaves band over eight plain pilasters articulates seven bays of exceptionally fine Flemish-bond brickwork on a moulded stone plinth. The 20th-century sash windows are of 4/4 panes. The central stone doorcase has a segmental-arched pediment over an eared architrave to a 20th-century two-panel door. Twentieth-century wings with entrances flank this facade and partly front the late 18th-century block to the right, which has 6/6-pane sash windows to the first floor and blocked windows to the ground floor.

Internally, the early 18th-century house retains considerable detail of that period. The entrance from St Mary Street has a lobby opening into a room with a box cornice and egg-and-dart frieze, dado rail and two six-panel doors set in moulded eared architraves with dentilled cornices over pulvinated friezes. The room to the left was altered in the mid-19th century; its piers are of semi-elliptical section with slender Gothic-style engaged colonettes to the entres, their small capitals supporting running moulding to the intrados of window arches. The rear of this room, now subdivided, has a very wide semi-elliptical-arched recess with similar ornament.

The early 18th-century staircase to the rear is an open-well design with closed string and alternating turned vase balusters and barley-sugar twist balusters, with a moulded handrail. The wall has a dado with raised-and-fielded panelling below. The ceiling is coved with an elliptical panel to the centre, probably a mid-19th-century addition, as is the semi-elliptical cove with similar ornament over a panelled door with a painted semi-elliptical fanlight installed in the front room. Some upper rooms retain box cornices, dado rails, moulded shutters and soffits, and doors with six raised-and-fielded panels.

The late 18th-century wing was adapted as a council chamber in the mid to late 19th century. The first-floor level was raised to accommodate the high ceiling of the chamber, which features a modillion cornice, a full-height semicircular arched recess flanked by fluted Ionic columns, a large white marble fireplace with an elaborate cast-iron register grate, panelled shutters and soffits, and two wide six-panel doors set in eared architraves with pediments.