Conventual buildings of Ewenny Priory (Nprn143) adapted and rebuilt as a private mansion from 1545; house rebuilt 1803-5.

The house, outbuildings, and gardens were built within and incorporate parts of the monastic precinct: during the sixteenth century the priory buildings to the south of the church were converted into a large house, parts of which survived the subsequent rebuilding.
An engraving of 1741 by the Buck brothers shows the two-storey Tudor house on the site of the present one; by the beginning of the nineteenth century the house was ruinous, having been described as a 'miserable mansion' in 1787.
The present house is a five-bay, stone Georgian mansion standing on the site of the south wing of the Tudor house, constructed 1803-5: it has two-storeys above a basement, with a projecting porch in the middle of the south front reached by a flight of stone steps. The west wing of the Tudor house was adapted as outbuildings and part of the house, with an arched entrance into an inner courtyard, the site of the monastic cloisters. The third storey was added to the wing as a billiards room in the 1890s.

Taken from Long Text attached to Nprn265767.

Associated with:
Park/gardens (Nprn265767)
Stables (Nprn37533)
Dovecote (Nprn37532)

J.Wiles 19.10.04

[Additional: RFS/RCAHMW/04-11-2019] Tree-ring dating commissioned by RCAHMW. Results by the Oxford dendro. Lab. reported in the tree-ring dates for 2019, Vernacular Architecture 50, List 311:

GLAMORGAN
5. EWENNY, Ewenny Priory (SS 9124 7777) , service range
(a)Roof Felling date range: 1531?61
(b)Stub-tie (re-used ceiling beam) Felling date: Spring 1525
(a) Principal rafters (1/4) 1520(h/s); (b) Stub-tie (re-used) 1524(141=4C). Site Master 1449?1524 EWENNY (t?6.4
MODASQ01; 6.4 CGFE; 6.1 BDGLRT7; 6.1 HEREFC).
Ewenny Priory was dissolved c. 1536. The site (apart from the Priory church) was first leased in 1537 and then
purchased in 1545 by Sir Edward Carne (d. 1561), who adapted the conventual buildings as a great house. The
range sampled is on the south side of the former cloister and may have been the monastic refectory. It was
adapted, probably as a hall, with arch-headed lights, characteristic of mid/later sixteenth-century Glamorgan. The
range was radically remodelled in the early nineteenth century, becoming the service range to a new-built late
Georgian house. The trusses recently became partially accessible through building works. Most had been renewed,
presumably in the nineteenth century, but two older collar-beam trusses set on stub-ties had been retained. The
date suggests that the range was remodelled shortly after purchase by Sir Edward Carne in 1545. A pre-
Reformation felling date was obtained from the stub-tie of truss 5, which is interpreted as a section of re-used
ceiling beam. Survey and description: RCAHMW, Glamorgan: The Greater Houses (1981), 338; RCAHMW,
Glamorgan: The Later Castles (2000), 125?47. Sampled at the suggestion of David Robinson. NPRN 308.

See now, David Robinson's article on Ewenny in Country Life, 2019.