Late-C19/early-C20 gardens, laid out within C16 garden walls beside medieval buildings, set within a park which retains possible monastic fish ponds, developed as a whole in the C18, with C19 reworking.
LOCATION, AREA, BOUNDARIES, LANDFORM, SETTING St Osyth's Priory is located in the village of St Osyth, close to the Essex coast and on the east side of the St Osyth and Flag Creek estuary. This is a popular holiday area, where the level ground gives long views over the flat landscape and the estuary waters. The c.76ha site is bounded by a farm track and agricultural land to the north, by the main road from Colchester to the east, and by the road known as The Bury and the village green to the south. The western boundary looks out across the flood plains of the estuary.
ENTRANCES AND APPROACHES The Priory and its associated buildings are located in the south-east corner of the site, approached through an imposing late-C15 gatehouse of knapped flint (listed at Grade I) situated on The Bury. This is the main historic entrance which leads directly into The Green, a garden court on the south front of the Priory. From the northern boundary an early-C18 drive, altered to its present alignment in the mid-C18 and in 2012 a track, enters the park close to the Colchester Road (the late-C18 lodges were demolished in the 1960s). It follows a curving line south through the park to arrive at the stable buildings on the west side of The Green. A late-C20 drive enters the site through the buildings of Priory Farm and joins the north drive to the west of The Green. A further C18 entrance from the western boundary no longer survives. There are additional entrances from The Bury, Colchester Road, Mill Street and the creek.
PRINCIPAL BUILDING St Osyth's Priory (listed at Grade I; the whole Priory site is a scheduled ancient monument, but the designations are being reviewed in 2013) is an imposing mansion of red brick, ashlar, black diapering and septaria chequer-work, under a red-tiled roof, built in a T-plan. The entrance front faces south onto The Green, while the north front faces the garden lawn and parkland beyond. The complex structure incorporates Bishop Vyntoner's c.1527 buildings, a mid-C16 wing and the eastern Clock Tower added by Lord Darcy, mid-C18 house to the west by Lord Rochford, and a mid-C19 east service wing. All ranges were subject to later C19/C20 alterations. A red-brick wall (recommended for listing at Grade I in 2013), now a garden wall but originally part of Lord Darcy's C16 building, is attached to the south-east tip of the Priory and runs east to join the mid-C16 Darcy Tower (listed at Grade I). The octagonal tower is built of ashlar and septaria, in three stages with raised turrets at three angles. On the north side of the Tower is the Chapel (listed at Grade I) incorporating medieval work. Beyond the Chapel, c.75m to the north are the ruins of the east range (listed at Grade I) of Lord Darcy's C16 house.
GARDENS AND PLEASURE GROUNDS The garden at St Osyth's lies to the south, east, and north of the Priory. The Green between the Gatehouse and the Priory is enclosed by a mid-C16 garden wall (listed at Grade II) to the east, running south from, and attached to, the Darcy wall, and by a range of buildings to the west, which include a listed C16 Tithe barn (listed at Grade II*), a C16 brewhouse (listed at Grade II), and a medieval barn and cottage (listed at Grade II*). The courtyard is laid to lawn set with walnut trees at the south end, and is surrounded by a gravel drive. Stone steps at the Priory end of the lawn lead onto a lower flat area, in the centre of which stood a sundial in the late-C19, the centrepiece of a small flower garden which no longer survives.
To the east of The Green, reached through a gate in the C16 garden wall, is a Topiary Lawn filled with clipped yew and edged with brick paths, divided by a brick pergola running south from the Darcy wall to a sunken bowling green. The Topiary Lawn and pergola, which date from the late C19/early C20, are enclosed to the east by a further mid-C16 garden wall (listed at Grade II). At the southern end of the bowling green, steps lead up to a gateway through a yew hedge dividing the C16 walled garden in half, into a Rose Garden laid out in a complex parterre of box-edged borders and gravel paths. The Rose Garden is also a late C19 feature, which was replanted in 2010. The south boundary wall of this compartment forms the southern boundary wall of the site. Beyond the walled garden to the north-east is a woodland walk which wraps around the eastern end of the Priory buildings. This is situated on the site of the C18 Wilderness shown schematically on both the 1762 and 1814 surveys which was substantially reworked in the mid -C19 by Sir John Johnson in the form which survives today (2012). Debois (2010) suggest that the Wilderness was the location of the Tudor grand formal garden, but the surviving configuration and planting is C19 and C20, although there may be archaeological remains of earlier garden layouts beneath. In the south-east corner of the gardens, bordered to the north by the Wilderness, is an open lawn with late-C20 herbaceous borders aligned on Darcy's Tower and leading east to a small hedged area known as the Monks Cemetery.
To the north of the Priory is a large open lawn set with mature cedar of Lebanon, and bounded to the north by a ha-ha. A small, informal lily pond c.100m north of the house, is surrounded by mixed shrub planting. By 1874 Sir John Johnson had reworked this area, which had been the C18 pleasure ground, incorporating some of the park to the north into the north lawn to make a new boundary which would accommodate the creation of the lily pond, all that remains of his Japanese Garden. In 2012, the lily pond no longer holds water.
PARK The large park at St Osyth's lies to the north of the Priory buildings. It is retained under grass and is crossed by avenues and thin belts of mixed species trees, with several oak pollards of great antiquity. The open park immediately to the north of the Priory has been devoid of trees since the storms of the late 1980s and was labelled as the 'Mowing Ground' on the 1814 plan, prior to which it contained a mount (estate map, 1762). By contrast, in the south-west section, known as Priory Park, many mature individuals survive. The central section of the park, known as Deer House Park, is covered with old and modern gravel extraction pits, those from the C19 having been re-colonised by vegetation, while some of the C20 pits are filled with water and, in 2012, were being cleared of vegetation. In the centre of the western boundary is a hummock on which is planted a copse, known as Grotto Grove, which contains the remains of a flint shell house, ruinous following a fire which destroyed the roof in the late-C20. Close by are the foundations of a second flint building known as The Kitchen. These two buildings are first shown on the 1762 plan, labelled 'Hermitage', and are part of the work undertaken by the fourth Earl of Rochford.
To the north of the gravel extraction area is the dense Nun's Wood containing a string of ponds. Debois (2010) consider that the ponds in Nun’s Wood have medieval antecedents and probably formed a monastic fishery, subsequently remodelled into water features in the C18. In 2012, the ponds were being cleared of vegetation and silt and the self-sown trees and scrub were being removed from the woodland. A ruinous brick and flint building at the north edge of the wood is noted as ‘Nuns Hall’ in the 1874 OS map. Debois (2010) suggest a C18 date, and note that it was used as a conduit, but its origins and early form are not clear. Beyond Nun's Wood is a further area of open parkland, known as Lodge Piece, with few surviving individual trees but an extensive perimeter plantation called The Belt which runs all along the eastern boundary. This was described as a nursery on the 1762 plan, which also shows a drive running through it. During the late C20 the plantation has been partly replanted and deepened.
The park is crossed by two large avenues of trees and a thin mixed belt in the south-west corner of the park known as the West Strip, planted on a bank which represents the position of the C18 West Avenue. The strip radiates from the same point c 200m north-west of the Priory as the Nun's Wood Avenue, which is aligned on the centre of Nun's Wood. It is crossed by the Chestnut Avenue which runs east/west through the park from the north drive to the western boundary just south of Grotto Grove and is shown in this position on the 1762 plan. It is possibly a survivor from an earlier formal layout (Debois 2003, 2010).
KITCHEN GARDEN The walled kitchen garden lies c.110m to the north-east of the Priory, reached via the woodland walks through the Wilderness. It is divided into two by a central walk and contains a perimeter gravel path edged by box borders. The ground is partly laid to grass and partly cultivated for vegetables. Beyond the northern boundary wall is a late-C20 wild garden. The kitchen garden was probably built in this position by the fourth Earl of Rochford in the mid-C18, although an early-C19 date has been suggested by Debois (2010) and is being assessed for listing in 2013.