Priory Road

Priory Road

(276) Priory House (TF 03930735) was built following a lease from the Earl of Exeter to Messrs. Treen and Lely in 1771, in which an expenditure of £200 was stipulated (Ex. MS, 77/1/13). Joseph Treen, tea dealer of the High Street, died in 1780 when his widow sold the lease (Mercury, 6 Apr. 1780). The house stands on the scarp above the Welland flood plain, and the sloping site resulted in a building of two storeys, attics and cellars on the N. and three full storeys on the S. The walls are of coursed rubble. The house of c. 1771 has a class 10 plan; on the S. a slightly later wing perhaps followed the sale of 1780. The three-bay N. front has two blocked windows and an early 19th-century Tuscan porch with cast-iron columns. On the S. the main features are early 19th-century curved bay windows on the principal floor. The cellar has wooden mullion-andtransom windows. The internal fittings, entirely of the early 19th century, include a stair with terminal scroll, and richly moulded architraves to doors and windows. The roof has staggered square-set purlins.

The Garden, flanked by ditches and with central gravel path, survives largely as it was described in 1780 (Mercury, 6 Apr.).