Site of St Radigund's Hospice

Summary

Remains of St Radigund’s Hospice 27m west of The Little House.

Reasons for Designation

In the medieval period a hospice or hospital was a place of refuge for pilgrims or wayfarers, normally set up along major roads. A medieval hospital comprises a group of buildings housing a religious or secular institution which provided spiritual and medical care. The idea for such institutions originated in the Anglo-Saxon period although the first definite foundations were created by Anglo-Norman bishops and queens in the 11th century. Documentary sources indicate that by the mid 16th century there were around 800 hospitals. A further 300 are also thought to have existed but had fallen out of use by this date. Half of the hospitals were suppressed by 1539 as part of the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Some smaller institutions survived until 1547 when they were dissolved by Edward VI. Many of these smaller hospitals survived as almshouses, some up to the present day. Despite the large number of hospitals known from documentary sources to have existed, generally only the larger religious ones have been exactly located. Few hospitals retain upstanding remains and very few have been examined by excavation. In view of these factors all positively identified hospitals retaining significant medieval remains will be identified as nationally important.

St Radigund’s Hospice in Canterbury is known from documentary sources. The site has not been excavated and will contain archaeological information relating to the construction, use and history of the medieval hospice.

History

See Details.

Details

This record was the subject of a minor enhancement on 17 March 2015. This record has been generated from an "old county number" (OCN) scheduling record. These are monuments that were not reviewed under the Monuments Protection Programme and are some of our oldest designation records.

The monument includes a medieval hospitum and a post-medieval bath house surviving as upstanding and buried remains just to the north of the medieval walls of Canterbury.

The hospitum or hospice, a type of medieval hospital, survives as buried remains. The site has not been excavated but is considered to contain the wall foundations and medieval deposits associated with the hospice. An 18th century bath house was later added to the site and is well recorded in documentary sources. Part of the stone wall of the bath house is incorporated into the wall of a workshop at No.16 St Radigund’s Street.

St Radigund’s (or ‘Radegund’s’) Hospice is thought to have been an occasional residence in Canterbury of the Abbots of St Radegund’s Abbey near Dover. The hospice was dedicated to St Radegund, a sixth century Frankish Princess, canonized in the 9th century, who founded several hospices in France and a convent at Poitiers. In the 18th century a bath house was built on the site. It is recorded by William Gostling in ‘A Walk in and about the City of Canterbury’ (1825) as a spring fitted with a bath approximately 6m long, 3.4m wide and 0.9m-1.2m deep. According to Gostling, it was purchased by the Corporation of Canterbury in 1793. The following year the bath was deepened and a covering building with an arched roof was built, together with dressing rooms and a waiting room. The bath house was later converted into a warehouse.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

KE 352

Legacy System:

RSM - OCN

Sources

Books and journals
Gostling, W, A walk in and about the city of Canterbury, (1825), 38-39

Websites
Hasted, E, 'Canterbury: Description of the city', The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent, Vol 11 (1800), 106-120, accessed 6 May 2010 from http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=63654&strquery=radigund hospital
Machado, T, Historic Canterbury: St.Radigund’s Bath (2007), accessed 6 May 2010 from http://www.machadoink.com/St%20Radigunds%20Baths.htm
Perkins, A, ‘St Radegund’ on Jesus College University of Cambridge, accessed 6 May 2010 from http://www.jesus.cam.ac.uk/college/history/radegund.html

Other
Kent HER TR 15 NE 82. NMR TR 15 NE 82. PastScape 464424.

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