Burford - Priory

Priory

Burford Priory is a country house that stands on the site of a 13th-century Augustinian hospital. In the 1580s an Elizabethan house was built incorporating remnants of the priory hospital. It was remodelled in Jacobean style, probably after 1637, when the estate had been bought by William Lenthall, Speaker of the House of Commons in the Long Parliament. The house and later the chapel were restored for the philanthropist Emslie John Horniman, M.P., after 1912 by the architect Walter Godfrey.

From 1949 Burford Priory housed the Society of the Salutation of Our Lady, a community of Church of England nuns. In the 1980s, its numbers dwindled, so in 1987 it became a mixed community including Church of England Benedictine monks. In 2008 the community sold the property and it has now returned to being a private house.