Situated in what are now the eastern suburbs of Bridgnorth’s Low Town, the site of the house that was later known as St James Priory, was originally a leper hospital which was first recorded in 1224.

After the Dissolution of the Monasteries, St James was purchased by Roger Smyth – Bailiff of Bridgnorth and MP for the town in 1547 and 1553 – from Sir John Perrot in 1556. Roger was already a tenant of the property and was married to Frances, daughter of Richard Cressett of Upton Cressett (q.v.). He was succeeded by his son George (d. 1600), who was styled as of both Morville (q.v.) and of St James. On George’s death, St James went to his younger son Richard Smyth, who married Mary, daughter of Charles Hibbins of Wem, and who was related to the influential Barker family of Haughmond.

The Smyths apparently demolished part of the old hospital buildings, although a section of the medieval structure, thought to have been part of the chapel, survived in the house until its twentieth-century demolition.

According to Rev. Samuel James, writing in 1877, the Smyths were followed in succession by the families of Smith, Dovey, Kinnersley, Nevitt, Tyner and Bach. The Bach heiress, Sarah, married Richard Stanier, and the property thereafter passed to that family. In 1831, though, John Blakeway claimed that St James was a purchase by the Stanier family, bought after 1733 for Richard Stanier, son of John Stanier of Cosford Grange (q.v.) and his wife Elizabeth, the co-heiress of Richard Leighton of Leighton. Stanier was only a minor at the time of the purchase but went on to serve as High Sheriff of Shropshire in 1740 and was succeeded at St James by his son John.

The house is said to have suffered a fire in the eighteenth century and, as a result, was rebuilt at that time – perhaps during Richard Stanier’s term as Sheriff. The earlier structure had been a U-plan set of buildings and the rebuild led to the space between the wings being in-filled to contain a ‘splendid drawing-room, about seventeen feet high’.

The entrance front of the house, to the north, apparently lay on the side of one of the earlier wings. It was two-storeyed with attics, and had a shallow gabled central projection.