The Master's Garden, St Cross Hospital

The site was founded in 1132 by Henry de Blois, Bishop of Winchester, for 13 poor men, with 100 others provided with dinner daily. It was under the Hospitallers until 1185 and had by then increased to 200. By the mid-13th-century the hospital had fallen into decay. The buildings were repaired by degrees and the Hospital recovered.

In 1445 the buildings were enlarged with the Almshouse of Noble Poverty built by Cardinal Beaufort. Throughout its history St Cross seems to have been noted for its gardens and it would not be surprising for the Masters to maintain fine gardens for themselves. Dr Markland, master from 1694 to 1728, took a great interest and converted the area to the south of the hospital into a fine formal garden adorned with a canal and evergreen shrubs. At least one ‘canal' can be recognised, as an earthwork along the west boundary of the medieval precinct.

The Ordnance Survey Field Investigator (6) 1961 reports that there are traces in St Cross Park, to the south of the present buildings, which are almost certainly those of the original 12th-century buildings. 100 metres squared is bounded on the west and south sides by a dry ditch with fragmentary river bank and on the east and part of the north sides by a stream. These features presumably marked the precincts of the hospital. In the north-east corner of the enclosed area is an L-shaped platform almost certainly representing a range of building foundations, although no stone or brickwork is visible. Within the angle of the range a vague platform probably represents another building.

Chris Currie suggests that there might have been a moat around an area which would not have had buildings within it. Therefore, it could possibly have been a garden. A visitor in 1722-23 is quoted as saying that the Master ‘...hath a very good apartment, with fine gardens adorned with a canal and evergreens...'.

There appears to have been a complete circuit of ditches and water courses suggesting that the site was adapted from an earlier moated garden. It seems to have contained an orchard when a survey of the hospital was undertaken in 1401. The survey also records a number of other gardens within the precinct, including a vegetable garden, the Porter's garden and the Home garden. The total area was in excess of 3.6 hectares. Humbert (1857) reports that an Act of Elizabeth I forbade the master from leasing ‘the orchards, gardens...lying within the precincts of the Hospital of St Cross'.

On the site of the present Master's house was the ‘Northgardyn', then an orchard. Surveys taken in the mid-1850s show that the boundary followed the outer edge of the ditches on the west and south side of the field known as St Cross Park. Parkland trees can be seen today.

Type

Garden

Purpose

Ornamental

Principal Building

Domestic / Residential

Period

Medieval (1066-1540)

Survival

Extant

Open to the public

Yes