Somerset Cricket Museum

The building, which is within the confines of the County Ground, is the Old Priory Barn, a Grade II* listed building. It is the only surviving building of the Augustinian Taunton Priory which was founded about 1115,^[1] although there is some evidence that its early use was not as a barn but as a guesthouse or quarters for a Priory official.^[2] The local stone rubble has been repaired with red brick and has a tie-beam roof covered with tiles. The door and window openings are made of Bishops Lydeard stone.^[3] The exact dates of the building are disputed, but is argued to be from the late 15th or early 16th century,^[4] and replacing an earlier 13th or 14th-century building on the site, but incorporating some of the earlier building.^[5] It was a Scheduled Ancient Monument until 1999 when it was descheduled.^[6] The building was once used as a chapel by Frenchmen, possibly prisoners during the French Revolutionary Wars or Napoleonic Wars.^[4]