140 



St. Nicholas* Hospital Salisbury. 



a large part of the hospital — some would maintain almost a half, 

 but to their opinion I find it impossible to subscribe. What it was 

 there is no record to tell, and I fear we shall never know. It 

 may have been that it was thought inexpedient to keep up such a 

 large building, now that the purpose of the hospital was definitely 

 narrowed from being the receptacle of sick poor with their nurses, 

 to being only a retirement for pensioners. But whatever caused it, 

 there is no doubt that the demolition did actually take place : more 

 than fifty feet of the north wall were taken down, and the 

 cells on the north side of the row of arches swept away : and so 

 nothing remained of the hospital except the double chapel and five 

 cells to the south of the wall which contained the row of arches. 

 To provide room for the inmates Mr. Hickman tells us that two 

 rooms were built on to the farm-house (which had once been the 

 " vetus hospitale ") on the east end, with a chamber for the chaplain 

 over them. And other rooms may possibly have been found in the 

 master's house, which was over the cells to the west of what is now 

 the chapel ; also possibly over a building which is figured in Mr. 

 Hickman's map (see Plate II.) as the " Weavers' Shops," between 

 the farm-house and the row of old arches. 



This map also tells us of a considerable amount of building outside 

 Bingham's hospital, which must have been built previous to the demo- 

 lition of the end of the fifteenth century. Besides the weavers' shops 

 already spoken of there were considerable buildings on either side of 

 the old porch. This porch was, like all the rest of the hospital, double : 

 and we can guess what the northern porch was like in size and shape 

 from the southern one, which remains. The northern porch was ap- 

 parently spared from the demolition of 1498, but alienated from the 

 hospital, and (probably with additions on the north side) turned into a 

 separate tenement : to the south of the southern porch there was 

 another small tenement, with a garden annexed, which was then the 

 kitchen of the hospital, and continued so to be for the next hundred 

 years. 



In 1501 we come to the first event in the St. Nicholas' history 

 of which a contemporary record is extant. On the last fly-leaf at 

 the beginning of the register are inscribed, in Latin, these words : 



