
The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland

St Mary des Essarz (medieval)
Augustinian house, former
The ruined priory of Ranton and the remains of the Georgian hall alongside it stand in landscaped parkland 1 mile W of the village of Ranton and 5 miles W of Stafford. All that survives of the abbey church is the W tower and a short section of the S nave wall rebuilt to house the S doorway. This doorway is of the late 12thc. The 15thc. tower has angle buttresses, a five-light W window and two-light bell-openings below a saltire frieze and an embattled parapet. All the main windows are now blocked with bricks. To the S of the church is the ruined shell of the house, called Ranton Abbey and dating fromc.1820 according to Pevsner. Various antiquarian drawings survive in the William Salt Library, many by Buckler and most concentrating on the W tower. SV VIII 59 (Buckler 1842) shows the S doorway looking much as it does today, but it is not clear from this whether any more of the nave wall was standing at that date.