For nearly 900 years, a succession of buildings has stood on the low sandstone hill to the north of Warwick, a site now occupied by the County Record Office. The Priory of Saint Sepulchre was founded here by Henry de Newburgh, the first Earl of Warwick, between 1114 and 1119. It belonged to the order of the Canons of the Holy Sepulchre, who had the special duty of caring for pilgrims to the Holy Land. After the fall of Jerusalem in 1188, the house became indistinguishable from an ordinary Augustinian priory. The house was surrendered to the crown in 1536 by the then-prior, Robert Radford, and three canons.

In 1546, the Priory was granted to Thomas Hawkins (alias Fisher), a servant of John Dudley. Dudley was the father-in-law of Lady Jane Grey and was created Earl of Warwick in 1547. Fisher pulled down the old buildings and, on the site, built a mansion, finished in about 1566, which, according to Dugdale, he called “Hawkyns Nest”. After Fisher’s son had wasted his inheritance, he sold it to John Puckering in 1581. Puckering was a lawyer who became the Speaker of the House of Commons and was made Keeper of the Great Seal in 1592 and knighted. The house was remodelled, probably by Sir John or his widow, between 1581 and 1611. The west front made uniform, with the row of six reroofs headed gables rising above the parapet, familiar from photographs. Henry Wise later acquired Henry Wise, Royal Gardener The estate, royal gardener to King George I, Queen Anne and King William III. He purchased the property in 1709, along with Woodloes, Upper Woodcote and Lillington's manors, for £10,553 10s. His son added a massive square wing facing the terrace in about 1745. The Wise family retained ownership of the Priory until 1851, when Henry Christopher Wise, great, great-grandson of the royal gardener, sold the house and gardens to the Oxford Junction Railway Company. The now colossal mansion passed through various hands and restorations until A.W. Weddell bought it at a demolition sale in 1925. The Priory estate was acquired by Warwickshire County Council in 1940, but plans for its development had to be postponed because of the war. In 1953, Priory Park (which had been sold to Warwick Borough Council in 1951) was opened to the public. In 1972, excavations before the new County Record Office revealed that the 12th-century religious house had been built over three earlier limekilns. Traces of the monastery included burials, presumably under the church’s floor, and the outline of a small room with the base of a central column. Most of the foundations were, however, obliterated by the cellars of the Tudor mansion and its later additions.