St Katherine's Hall

Early afternoon, we visited nearby Ledbury, Herefordshire (UK) for a walk around the town, a coffee, and a food shop nearby. 

This week's W-I-D-E on Wednesday Challenge is 'Old' and Ledbury has a lot of old buildings. One of them is a unique medieval Hospital formally known as St Katherine’s Hospital (1231 AD)

St Katherines Hall and Chapel is one of the most important surviving medieval hospital sites in the country. Hospitals like this were fairly common in the Middle Ages, but few have been retained in their entirety.

St Katherine’s Hospital was founded in 1231 by Bishop Hugh Foliot to provide for the spiritual as well as the material well-being of the poor and the aged, the sick and the distressed, travellers and pilgrims. In the Middle Ages, ‘hospital’ didn’t mean what it does today. St Katherine’s was something like a cross between a church, a hostel and a soup kitchen. It stood right in the centre of town, amidst all the hustle and bustle of everyday life. A small group of men (and women from 1238) called ‘brethren’ looked after poor and needy local people by giving them ‘alms’ (food, shelter and care)