Priory Cottages and the Causeway, Steventon

A Norman abbey’s outpost

Henry I gave the manor of Steventon to the great Norman abbey of Bec, which ran it through its daughter house of St Mary de Pré near Rouen. A few monks lived here to manage the estate, and the house became known as Steventon Priory, one of the ‘alien priories’ owned by French monasteries. During the long wars with France the Crown took such priories into its own hands. In 1380 the soldier Sir Hugh Calveley was given custody of Steventon, and in 1385 the manor itself. In 1399 Richard II passed it to Westminster Abbey, and the abbey and its successor, the Dean and Chapter of Westminster, kept it until it was transferred to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in 1869.

The buildings

The priory buildings stand on the corner of The Causeway and Mill Street. They grew in stages over three centuries. The national list dates the south-west block to about 1330 and the north-west block to about 1463; the open hall followed around 1500, a service wing about 1550 and an east range late in the 16th century. The walls are timber-framed, some with close-set vertical studs, filled with painted brick and render. The hall keeps its false hammer-beam roof with two tiers of curved wind braces, a massive stone fireplace and medieval arched doorways.

By 1924 the Victoria County History described the Priory as a large 16th-century house with three gables to the north, carved bargeboards and projecting bay windows. It also noted that a fireplace and some panelling had been taken out and moved to the Manor House at Sutton Courtenay. The buildings have since been divided into two houses. They were given to the National Trust by Ferguson’s Gang, the masked group of anonymous donors who raised money for the Trust between the wars. The model of Priory Cottages at the Pendon Museum in Long Wittenham was the last model made by the museum’s founder, Roye England.

The Causeway

Steventon’s most distinctive feature is the Causeway, a raised path nearly a mile long, paved on top and lined with trees, that runs through the village past many of its timber-framed houses. It kept walkers above the water when the brooks around the village flooded. In 1419 the tenants of the manor were already said to be bound by ancient custom to repair it, and a village charity, founded with land given by two sisters, has looked after it since. The national list suggests it was probably built in the 14th century by the Benedictine monks of the priory. Three sections are listed at Grade II*, as are several of the houses beside it, such as 39 The Causeway, a late 14th-century timber-framed house.

Visiting

Priory Cottages are tenanted. Only the Great Hall in the southern cottage is shown, and visits must be booked in writing with the tenant, as the National Trust website explains. The Causeway is a public path and can be walked at any time; there is on-street parking near the church.