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St Mary Magdalene Leper Hospital

About a mile outside Winchester, just outside the city boundaries, is a field which, 900 years ago, was home to the city’s outcasts. The people who lived there were united by a terrible bond – a disease that disfigured their bodies and condemned them to a life of exile. The disease was leprosy and their home was the St Mary Magdalene leper hospital. Time Team set out to discover what was left of it under the grass in what the locals still know as Hospital Field.

In the 12th century, when the St Mary Magdalene leper hospital was built, Winchester was one of the most important cities in Norman England. The hospital itself had living quarters, a master’s house, a large cemetery and a beautiful vaulted chapel. All were provided and sustained by rich patrons, who saw their support of the hospital – and construction of the chapel – as their ticket to heaven through good works.

Time Team started its investigations with a geophysics survey of a long strip cutting across the site, and with a field-walking survey that revealed huge quantities of building material lying on the surface. Bernard Thomason and Chris Gaffney, meanwhile, were trying to find the exact locations of some test pits that were dug a few years ago, which uncovered evidence of buildings on the site.

Robin Bush’s research found references to the hospital from 1148 onwards; he reckoned it was most likely to have been built in the 1130s. He also produced illustrations of the hospital chapel made in 1788, just before it was demolished. Together with Stewart Ainsworth’s map research, which showed the hospital within a five-sided boundary wall that shows up as crop marks in aerial photographs, this helped to determine what the Team was looking for and where to put the trenches.