The Minories, Colchester

The Minories is a Grade II listed building and gardens situated at the east end of High Street in Colchester, Essex, England, near Hollytrees, Gate House and Colchester Castle. It currently houses The Minories Galleries which are run by Colchester School of Art, part of Colchester Institute.Early historyThe house is believed to have been built in the Tudor period. In 1731 it was purchased by the baize manufacturer Isaac Boggis for £420. His son, Thomas Boggis, inherited the house, and employed an architect, probably John Alefounder (1732–1787) to remodel the building, turning parts of it into an elegant Georgian residence. The Boggis family lived in the house for almost 200 years. From 1821 to 1915 the building had several owners and tenants, one of whom was Dr. Becker, a general practitioner (GP) whose son, Harry Becker, lived there for a time while he learned his trade as a landscape painter and went on to become one of East Anglia's best known artists.In 1915 Geoffrey Crawford Bensusan-Butt and his wife Dr. Ruth Crawford took over the lease, purchasing the property along with a portion of land that included the Gothic Folly, a summer house built in 1830. Crawford later had three exhibitions of his artwork shown at the Minories in 1962, 1964 and 1975. Dr. Ruth Crawford was the sister-in-law of the painter Lucien Pissarro, and was one of the first female GPs in Colchester. She used the front rooms of The Minories as her consulting rooms, and also opened Colchester's first infant nursery there. One of the Bensusan-Butt's three children was the English economist, David Bensusan-Butt.