St Giles' Hospital, Hexham

By J W Fawcett

About three-quarters-of-a-mile north west of the Priory Church of St Andrew's at Hexham stands, on a pleasant shady eminence overlooking the Tyne, the modern residence of the Spital, which occupies the site of the old hospital of St Giles' erected in the earlier part of the twelfth century. The exact year of its foundation is unknown, but it was sometime between 1114 and 1201. It was not a large benevolent institution, and hence its inmates were few and its endowments small. It was ruled by a master who was appointed by the Archbishops of York, who were Lords of the Manor of Hexham. The full complement of the house was four, two of whom were appointed by the Archbishop, and two by the Prior of Hexham for the time being, and these inmates had to be natives of the liberty of Hexham, poor labourers, infirm persons, or lepers, who were in need of some such charity. Others, however, who could support themselves might, with the consent of the Archbishop's guardian of the spiritualities, be admitted as inmates, and in this way we find that at times the numbers of brethren were sometimes as many as seven or eight. The endowment was insignificant, and their total income amounted to about four marks, or £5 13s. 4d. yearly. Besides the building in which they lived, they had a couple of acres of pasture lands and thirty acres of arable lands near Hexham, and their only money rent was 11s. 2d., which they derived from some property in Hexham, Fallowfield, and Portgate. The neighbouring Priory of Hexham, however, supplied them daily with six loaves of black bread and four lagens, or about nineteen quarts, of ale. In addition to this they also claimed one lagen or nearly five quarts of ale from every brewing on the Priory estate.

When King John was at Hexham in February, 1201, he granted a charter to the lepers of Hexham granting them freedom from all manner of tolls in the Counties of Northumberland and York. This is the earliest dated notice of the house we have. The next is that in 1274, when mention is made of the appointment of a Master. In 1296 the hospital suffered greatly in the Scottish invasion, the house being completely ruined, and in 1320 the inmates who had escaped with their lives complained to the Archbishop of York, that the rents from their property was not paid because the lands were waste; that their corn would hardly suffice for the sowing of the year; that they had only one cow for milk, and that they had four mules and four oxen for ploughing, and of them two mules and two oxen had been lent them by a kindly friend. They also complained that the Priory of Hexham, because of its own straightened circumstances, supplied them with only six loaves of bread and two lagens of ale per week instead of six loaves and four lagens a-day. In 1378 the plague visited the district and so ruined the hospital that the Archbishop of York, George Nevill, gave it and its property to Hexham Priory to the intent that they should support two poor people only, either at the hospital or in the Priory, and find a chaplain to perform service in the hospital once a week. It remained joined to the Priory until 1398, when it was separated only to be joined again before the dissolution. At that great suppression in 1536 it was valued at 13s. 4d. only, and was granted in 1538 to Sir Reginald Carnaby with the rest of Hexham Priory possessions, when, like the rest of the conventual buildings, it was at once secularized and converted into a private residence.