Swingfield Preceptory (or St John's Commandery, Swingfield) was a
priory
A priory is a monastery of men or women under religious vows that is headed by a prior or prioress. Priories may be houses of mendicant friars or nuns (such as the Dominicans, Augustinians, Franciscans, and Carmelites), or monasteries of ...
about 5 miles north of
Folkestone
Folkestone ( ) is a port town on the English Channel, in Kent, south-east England. The town lies on the southern edge of the North Downs at a valley between two cliffs. It was an important harbour and shipping port for most of the 19th and 20t ...
,
Kent
Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...
on the south coast of
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...
.
History
The Preceptory (headquarters of certain orders of monastic knights) was taken over by the
Knights Hospitaller
The Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem ( la, Ordo Fratrum Hospitalis Sancti Ioannis Hierosolymitani), commonly known as the Knights Hospitaller (), was a medieval and early modern Catholic military order. It was headq ...
in 1180 after sisters of the same order were moved to
Buckland Priory
Buckland Priory (also known as Minchin Buckland Preceptory or Buckland Sororum (Latin: "Buckland of the Sisters")) was established around 1167 in Lower Durston, Somerset, England.
Priory
It was founded by William de Erleigh (or Erlegh) for Aug ...
.
It was suppressed during the
Dissolution of the Monasteries and leased on 16 March 1541 to John Thorgood and Thomas Horseley for twenty-one years.
[ It then passed through many families (including ]Sir Anthony Aucher
''Sir'' is a formal honorific address in English for men, derived from Sire in the High Middle Ages. Both are derived from the old French "Sieur" (Lord), brought to England by the French-speaking Normans, and which now exist in French only as ...
, Sir Henry Palmer, of Wingham and Sir Thomas Palmer, 4th Baronet, of Wingham
Sir Thomas Palmer, 4th Baronet, of Wingham (5 July 1682 – 8 November 1723) was a British landowner and Whig politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1708 and 1723.
Early life
Palmer was the eldest son of Herbert Palmer of Wingham, Ke ...
).English Heritage
English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, medieval castles, Roman forts and country houses.
The charity states that i ...
.
Architecture
It was originally built between the 13th and 16th centuries as a farmhouse of flint
Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Flint was widely used historically to make stone tools and sta ...
, which has been knapped
Knapping is the shaping of flint, chert, obsidian, or other conchoidal fracturing stone through the process of lithic reduction to manufacture stone tools, strikers for flintlock firearms, or to produce flat-faced stones for building or facing ...
in places. It also has stone quoin
Quoins ( or ) are masonry blocks at the corner of a wall. Some are structural, providing strength for a wall made with inferior stone or rubble, while others merely add aesthetic detail to a corner. According to one 19th century encyclopedia ...
s and dressings.
The west gable end is tile-hung on both floors. The north elevation retains areas of render painted and is scored to resemble red brick in Flemish bond
Brickwork is masonry produced by a bricklayer, using bricks and mortar. Typically, rows of bricks called '' courses'' are laid on top of one another to build up a structure such as a brick wall.
Bricks may be differentiated from blocks by si ...
.
References
External links
English Heritage
Monasteries in Kent
English Heritage sites in Kent
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