York is full of history and heritage. I regularly take guests out for walking tours of the City as part of extended tours and I still find new historic locations to investigate.
Recently, I had a family to collect from No.1 The Guesthouse (formerly The Grange) which is in a grand Georgian building close to St. Peter’s School in Bootham. As I walked up the road, I noticed an old stone arched doorway on the ground floor of a red brick building.
I was intrigued and quickly googled the property. It turns out it was called Ingram Hospital and is one of York’s most important mid-seventeenth century buildings.
The main brick built part of the property – excluding the doorway, was built between 1635 and 1640 by Sir Arthur Ingram. He was a politician and later on in his career made his money off the back of property development. At the time he built the property he also owned the Archbishop’s Palace next to York Minster where he had landscaped the gardens and turned the Palace into his home.
Before this Yorkshireman Ingram had been a linen draper in London and married the daughter of a rich haberdasher called Richard Goldthorpe, who had been Mayor of York. He became so rich that he was able to buy the manor of Temple Newsham and was responsible for re-building Temple Newsham House.
He was an important figure in the North and in 1612 he was appointed to the Council in the North and was knighted a year later.
Ingram Hospital was built by Ingram as an almshouse for 10 poor widows. Almshouses were sometimes known as Poorhouses, Bedehouses or Hospitals and were usually built by a wealthy benefactor to provide charitable housing for the local community. They first started to appear in the Middle ages and often were built for the elderly, former employees, the sick and needy as well as widows.
They helped fulfil a social services need for their day and were usually charitable concerns which were run by Trustees. The word alms usually relates to money or services which were donated to the poor or sick.
Ingram Hospital Almshouse consisted of 11 bays of two low storeys, each with a shuttered window and a door with limestone lintel. There is also a 4 storey central tower.
The middle doorway is late Norman (c1100’s) and is believed to have been moved from another site, reputedly Holy Trinity Priory on Micklegate. The Priory was abandoned during the Dissolution of the Monasteries and its doorway abandoned. It is round-headed and has several orders of Romanesque dog-tooth moulding. It was incorporated into the almshouse at the time of building.
Ingram died in 1940, but his will states:
“And if I shall happen to dye before I have settled and assured land for the performance of the payments and indownments to the poore people and others in the house or hospitall which I have lately builded in Bowtham within the Suburbes of the Citty of Yorke, then my will and mind is that the said house and the groundes therewith now used, and fifty poundes a year paide to Tenn poore widdowes namely for every of them five poundes a peece yearely and . . ."
During the English Civil War, the building being outside the City walls did suffer during the Siege of York in 1649. Being at the mercy of Parliamentarian troops it received some damage and there are records of repairs taking place later in 1649.
The building remained as an almshouse right up until 1959, when it was turned into 4 flats and renamed Ingram House.
Comments