Priory Gatehouse, Worksop, Notts.

Image: © David Hallam-Jones Taken: 8 Sep 2016

The Grade 1-listed, early C14th priory gatehouse facing the B6040 at the point where the local road names change from Cheapside (on the photographer's right) and Potter Street (on the photographer's left). The road running at the side of the gatehouse is Priorswell Road. Until 1893-4, traffic passed through the archway. However, following the demolition of a blacksmith's forge, the road was diverted to the west side of the gatehouse. This whole area was part of the Manor of Radford-by-Worksop, even before the priory was established. Access to the huge priory and its grounds was previously through this heavily secured gatehouse. The small shrine chapel, identifiable by the church-type windows was added later. The upper rooms (a small hall and a medium-size hall) of this gateway property has seen use over the years as short-stay accommodation for visitors to the priory or travellers en-route elsewhere; as a school; ("England's first elementary school"); as residential accommodation for the vicars of this fully-functioning Anglo-Catholic church (i.e. The Priory); as a museum and as a venue for church meetings and functions, i.e. a church hall. It is currently empty and awaiting restoration funding attempts. The C13th, Grade II-listed market cross was formerly situated in the centre of Worksop but was re-sited here in 1896. The road (and before that, the track) that ran between where the traffic signals are now situated - right up to the archway - arrived here from Welbeck and Mansfield, having passed through sections of the much larger Sherwood Forest in the days of yore.

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