The north entrance front stretches across fifteen bays, which is a considerable width for any domestic building, and the reason for that width is written into the architecture itself: the structure was extended, adapted, and extended again across more than a century, each campaign of work leaving its own legible mark without entirely obscuring what came before.

The house was built in 1720, designed by Reuben Harvey for a Christopher Tuckey. In 1770 it was significantly enlarged, and the stonework above the main entrance door still carries that date in its pediment, framed by engaged Doric columns supporting an entablature, a classical arrangement in which columns are attached to rather than freestanding from the wall. The two bays on either side of the original recessed central section were added at this point, framed by ashlar pilasters and capped by shallow projections from the main roofline. A Venetian window sits at first-floor level above the door, and an oval window with elaborate glazing occupies the centre of the second floor, details that together give the facade its late eighteenth-century character even though the core behind it is older. The most dramatic transformation came in 1825, when the building passed to the Ursuline order and was converted into a convent. L-shaped additions prolonged the entrance front by four bays at each end, a chapel and choir were added to the east, and the garden front to the south was extended with three-bay projections at both ends. The rendered walls of the upper building give way at basement level to exposed coursed limestone ashlar, a plain but telling detail that marks where the earliest fabric sits closest to the ground.