29. THE HOSPITAL OF ST. ANTHONY AND ST. ELOY, CAMBRIDGE
Henry Tangmere, who died about 1361, built
at his own expense the Hospital of St. Anthony
and St. Eloy (Eligius) for lepers (fn. 1) —a term which
need not be taken as medically exact.
The date is a late one for a leper house, except
in the west country, but for a long time no lepers
had been housed at Sturbridge and the foreign
trading connexions of Cambridge may have made
such a house desirable.
Very little is known of its history. It stood outside the Trumpington Gate 'in front of the present
line of houses in Trumpington Street at the Lensfield Road corner'. (fn. 2) Cooper, quoting Masters, says
that Tangmere gave both his religious foundations
to the College of Corpus Christi, but that 'the
townsmen soon after took them away by violence'.
In 1392 the Bishop of Ely, Fordham, granted an
indulgence to such as should relieve the brethren
and sisters of the house of lepers, or Hospital, of
St. Anthony and St. Eloy. (fn. 3) John Harryes, mayor
1394-6, by his will in 1418 left 6s. 8d. to 'the
lazar house towards Trumpington'. (fn. 4)
In 1526 the mayor and burgesses let 'the house
of lepers commonly called the Spetylehouse' with
its garden to Robert Brunn and Margaret his
wife for their lives, to receive leprous men and
women and to collect alms for their support. They
were to maintain good order in the house and to
keep securely the furniture and ornaments. The
schedule of the latter shows that the chapel was
well appointed: besides four altar cloths and five
alabaster images, there were of the recent gift of
John Grene an altar frontal 'steyned with an
ymage of our Lady Seynt Anthony and Seynt
Loye', a wooden image of Our Lady, newly
painted, and 'iij ymages closed in iron', also of
wood. There were also four bells; one in the
roof, one at the chapel door, St. Anthony's bell,
of latten, and a sacring bell. The furniture of the
house, so far as it was considered worth mentioning, was very scanty. (fn. 5)
Beyond occasional small bequests, (fn. 6) and such
records as the purchase in 1584 of a pair of sheets
'for ye madd woman in ye spitle house', (fn. 7) there is
little reference to the hospital, or almshouse as it
had become by the middle of the 16th century.
Francis Turner, Bishop of Ely, reporting on
hospitals in his diocese in 1686 says that besides
the hospitals at Sturbridge, 'Wittsford Bridge' and
Leverington 'believed to have been eaten up' by
the Act of 37 Henry VIII 'any other Hospitall
now being within the Diocese of Ely is not to be
found, only a poor house there is at the entering
into Cambridge from London which hath been
called the Spittle. It was built up with brick
within the memory of man in the room of a few
old rotten cottages, and the poor which now possess it have neither rule nor endowment besides
their dwelling there, having only a small allowance out of two Parishes in which they are situated, and for the rest of their sustenance they are
obliged to the Basket which the Master of the
Hospitall (who is allowed to keep an Alehouse
in a mean tenement next adjoining) sends out
to begg relief for Himself and the rest with
Him.' (fn. 8)
The Spital House seems to have been used as
an almshouse for widows which passed under the
Municipal Reform Act of 1837 from the governorship of the mayor and aldermen to that of trustees. (fn. 9)
The house in Trumpington Street was pulled
down in 1852 and the present almshouses were
built in Panton Street. (fn. 10)