Cowick Priory
Geoffrey Yeo’s identification of Cowick Barton as marking the site of Cowick Priory may be accepted without question.
The stained glass from the house was form early in the possession of my father, the late Arthur L. Radford. It was reset in the windows at Bovey House, Beer, before 1914 and exhibited at the Society of Antiquaries, after he gave up the lease o f the house in 1914. The record of the meeting, on 28 May 1914, describes the two pieces from ‘Cowick Priory ’ as ‘the arms of Edward VI with prince’s crown in wreath o f am orini’ and ‘red and white Tudor rose and crown, temp. Edward VI’ . 1 The record o f acquisition, with other papers concerning my fath er’s collection perished in the bom bing o f Exeter in 1942. About 1920 I went with my father to look at Cowick Barton , the house from which the glass came; it was then in a state of poor repair and we were unable to gain access to the interior. The house of late Elizabethan or Jacobean date was that shown in a sketch published in 1887.2 It was the house named Cowick Barton in records from about 1619 and later as noted by Geoffrey Yeo. The external exam ination showed that the core of the building, including the main range and the wing on the right, in part at least, belonged to an older building. This can only have been the house o f the Russells and the record o f a date stone o f 1540 is borne out by the glass which must date from before the accession o f Edward VI in 1547. It is a reasonable conjecture that Russell took over and perhaps added to a part o f the priory buildings and that the main range o f the house shown in the sketch was the west range of the monastic cloister, which would have housed, on the upper floor, the Prior’s lodging and the main guest rooms. I summarize my father’s conclusions, which were set down in a report, my copy of which was destroyed with his other papers.