Saxon hospital discovered in Winchester

Archaeologists have uncovered new evidence that could make Winchester home to the earliest known hospital in Britain.

A dig of the site known today as Hospital Field, which was formerly the St Mary Magdalen leper hospital revealed the city’s outcasts suffering from the disease that disfigured their bodies lived there more than 1,000 years ago.

The University of Winchester excavations and radio carbon analysis of what was found there date the burials at AD960-1030 and many of those skeletons have evidence of leprosy, which made them outcasts in society.

A number of artefacts, pits and postholes revealed what archaeologists think is a large sunken structure under the medieval infirmary and evidence of an earlier building thought to be an Anglo-Saxon chapel at the site a mile outside the city boundaries off Alresford Road.

Dr Simon Roffey, who has been directing the excavations with his colleague Dr Phil Marter, said: “This is an important archaeological development.

“Our excavations at St Mary Magdalen offer an intriguing insight into a little known aspect of the history of both Winchester and England. It is undoubtedly a site of national importance.”

He added: “Historically it has always been assumed that hospitals were a post-conquest phenomena, the majority founded from the late 11th century onwards. However our excavations have revealed a range of buildings and more significantly convincing evidence for a foundation in the 10th century.”

The exciting discovery could suggest the hospital was designed as a blueprint model in a period that witnessed widespread religious reform with England’s capital Winchester and its bishop at the heart of the changes.

Dr Roffey, said: “This was a reform that included the enclosure of monastic spaces in the city and the tighter regulation of religious life. It is possible that such changes also led to the foundation and enclosure of a religious community of lepers, or the foundation of a monastic hospital on the outskirts of the city. If so, the hospital could reflect a more altruistic and outward-looking aspect of national monastic reform.”

Among the earliest known hospitals in the UK is Harbledown in Canterbury founded by Lanfranc in the 1070s, following the Norman Conquest.

Leading historian Professor Nicholas Orme, who researches and writes on medieval hospitals, said: “I have only studied the documentary evidence but I could not find any such evidence for a hospital before 1066 except perhaps as an activity within a monastery or minster.

“A late Anglo-Saxon hospital would surely be a ‘first’ for archaeology and indeed for history.”

After the hospital, the site – which is thought to be a couple of acres in size – became a prison for Dutchmen in the 17th century and more recently an Army base during the First World War.