NEW plans have been submitted for a historic building at St Osyth Priory to be used as a wedding venue.

The Sargeant family, who owns the priory, was given the green light to turn the 16th century Grade II listed Tithe Barn into a visitor centre with a shop, cafe and offices in 2015.

It included providing space for a wedding venue and function room as part of a bid to help pay for restorations on the site.

But now the family has submitted fresh plans to use the priory’s historic Darcy House as a wedding venue and event space, including bed suites for guests, along with the creation of a car park.

A planning statement said: “The optimum viable use of the priory estate has been investigated over a 20-year period.

“Darcy House is at its centre and the current proposals are to use it as a weddings and conference facility.

“The aim of the applications is to gain consent for a car park and alternative beneficial uses and the necessary works to Darcy House east and south ranges that are more valuable than their current uses, still sympathetic to their heritage value and will better assist with their repair, thus providing them with a more secure long-term future.

“It will also assist in the successful delivery of the vision of the historic priory estate to become a significant leisure and tourism venue within Tendring.”

It added that attracting a commercial venture to the priory will help to reduce the significant “conservation deficit” in the cost of restoring the estate.

Darcy House comprises three wings, including the 18th and 19th century Rochford house and Abbot Vintoner’s 1527 lodgings, John Johnson’s 19th century house, and the remains of the mediaeval cellarer’s range, where the Vintoner range was extended south by Lord Darcy in 1553.

The scheme would see the west wing preserved as a house and Johnson’s lavish drawing rooms and east and south wings to be used as function rooms and bedroom suites.

The buildings are currently partially used as residential accommodation and partly for storage.

A decision is expected to be made by Tendring Council later this year.