History post about the original St Leonard’s Hospital in York

[Mick.Popka]

This article was posted on the Facebook Group “York Past & Present”.

I thought it may be of interest to AVG guides:
Author: Tony Morgan

“History post about the original St Leonard’s Hospital in York.

As a follow up to my post yesterday about my new book about Tudor York, here are some things I discovered during my research about the original St Leonard’s Hospital (which St Leonard’s Hospice is named after).

The establishment which later became known as St Leonard’s Hospital is one of few religious houses in York to pre-date the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. It is believed to have originally been called the Hospital of St Peter and was created as an integral part of the original church on the site of York Minster.
There are reports King Athelstan visited the hospital in 936 and was so impressed by the care being administered to the sick and the poor, he initiated a local tax to pay for the hospital’s upkeep.

During the Middle Ages, King Stephen issued orders for a new church to be built in York which would be dedicated to St Leonard.
Eventually this church took over healthcare from the original hospital and evolved into St Leonard’s Hospital. The clerical staff included Augustinian brothers and sisters. While the brothers focused on spiritual matters, the sisters and lay brothers provided care.

By the time of the Tudors, St Leonard’s played a very important role in York. Within the hospital grounds, care was provided for the sick, elderly and dying and hospital acted as a retirement home for selected people. Lastly, alms were given to beggars outside the hospital gates.

Traditionally, St Leonard’s cared for two types of resident. The first were known as corrodians. A corrody was an agreement whereby a religious house or hospital provided shelter and care for a person for the remainder of their life. This generally required a payment in cash, land or property to be made to the hospital, for example by a wealthy family.

The other residents were sometimes known as cremetts. These were infirm, poor and/or elderly people who lacked the ability to pay for their needs.

The numbers of patients and retirees at St Leonard’s fluctuated over the years. At times, over two hundred people were cared for within the hospital walls. This made St Leonard’s one of the largest and most important hospitals in the whole of early Tudor England.

During the reign of Henry VIII, this changed. In the mid-1530’s, as part of the Reformation of the Church in England, commissioners led by Thomas Cromwell inspected every religious house in the country.
The commissioners in York included one of the city’s aldermen, Sir George Lawson. Along with his colleagues, Alderman Lawson made a detailed record of the income and assets of each of the religious houses in York. They also made notes regarding alleged immoral activities but that’s not something for this post…….

In the following years, York’s major religious houses and institutions (with the exception of York Minster and the parish churches) were all closed. This took some time, as during this process there was a popular uprising called the Pilgrimage of Grace. Again, there’s too much to cover about that to cover here…..

When the rebellion’s leaders were tricked, arrested and later executed, the closure of the religious houses accelerated. York’s four friaries, two priories and St Clement’s which served as both a priory and a nunnery closed. The penultimate religious house to be shut down in the city was St Mary’s Abbey.

In December 1539, St Leonard’s Hospital was the last major religious house in York to surrender to the crown. The wards and rooms were all closed. No matter how ill or old the residents were, they were turfed out of their beds. The brothers and sisters and lay staff who’d cared for them were instructed to leave, losing their livelihoods and homes. St Leonard’s assets were sold off and the proceeds passed to the crown.

The Dissolution of the religious houses was an economic and social disaster for York. Wealth, income and employment flooded out of the city. Alms for the poor, schooling and healthcare were devastated.
Following the closure of St Leonard’s, there was not another major hospital in York until York County Hospital was opened in 1740.

Thankfully, it’s not all been doom and gloom since then, particularly following the opening of the new St Leonard’s Hospice in York. In 1978, four members of the Royal College of Nursing had an idea to create a new hospice in York.
Six years later in 1984, day care services began and in 1985 the first in-patient was admitted. Since then, St Leonard’s Hospice has expanded rapidly into the fantastic institution it is today”.

[Mike Young]

I read that there were 180 hospital residents when the hospital was finally closed. Do you have any idea where they might have gone? Were they looked after by church communities? Did they go to ‘secular’ hospitals?

( I am curious to know as, during my social work career I led teams of staff who were relocating residents of the old asylums into other kinds of accommodation.)

Thanks

Mike Young
17th April 2023

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