Daily prayer in Easter 2026: 23, Monday 27 April 2026

Christ as the Good Shepherd … a mosaic in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Easter is a 50-day season, beginning on Easter Day (5 April 2026) and continuing until the Day of Pentecost (24 May 2026), or Whit Sunday. This week began with the Fourth Sunday of Easter (Easter IV, 26 April 2026), sometimes known as ‘Good Shepherd Sunday’.

The calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship today remembers the poet Christina Rossetti (1830-1894). Later this evening, I hope to take part in a meeting of the trustees of a local charity in Stony Stratford. But, before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:

1, reading today’s Gospel reading;

2, a short reflection;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

The Good Shepherd … a stained glass window in Saint Mark’s Church, Armagh (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 10: 11-18 (NRSVA):

[Jesus said:] 11 ‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12 The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away – and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. 13 The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. 14 I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. 16 I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. 17 For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. 18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.’

Ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ποιμὴν ὁ καλός

Today’s Reflections:

This morning’s Gospel reading continues the Good Shepherd passage we were reading yesterday (John 10: 1-10).

In Saint John’s Gospel, there are seven I AM sayings in which Christ says who he is. The Dominican author and theologian, Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe, points out that that in the Bible, seven is the number of perfection. We know of the six days of creation and how God rested on the seventh. In Saint John’s Gospel, we have seven signs and seven “I AM” sayings disclosing for us who Christ truly is.

The seven signs in Saint John’s Gospel are:

• Turning water into wine in Cana (John 2: 1-11);
• Healing with a word (John 4: 46-51);
• Healing a crippled man at Bethesda (John 5: 1-9);
• The feeding of 5,000 (John 6: 1-14);
• Walking on water (John 6: 16-21);
• The healing of the man born blind (John 9: 1-7);
• The Raising of Lazarus from the dead (John 11: 1-46).

The seven ‘I AM’ sayings In Saint John’s Gospel, disclosing for us who Christ truly is, are:

• I am the Bread of Life (John 6: 35, 41, 48-51);
• I am the Light of the World (John 8: 12, 9: 5);
• I am the Door of the Sheepfold (John 10: 7, 9);
• I am the Good Shepherd (John 10: 11, 14);
• I am the Resurrection and the Life (John 11: 25);
• I am the Way, the Truth and the Life (John 14: 6);
• I am the True Vine (John 15:1, 5).

In the book of Revelation, we have the seven churches and the seven seals. And I could go on.

Today’s Gospel reading presents us with the best-known and best-loved ‘I AM’ sayings, which is repeated twice in this passage: ‘I am the Good Shepherd’ (John 10: 11, 14).

This is such a popular image – one that has been with many of us since our Sunday School and childhood days. I think, perhaps, that the image of the Good Shepherd is one of the most popular images to fill stained-glass windows in our church buildings, surpassed in popularity only by windows showing the Crucifixion or the Last Supper.

But sometimes I have problems with our cosy, comfortable image of the Good Shepherd. Christ is so often portrayed in clean, spick-and-span, neatly tailored, nicely dry-cleaned, red and white robes, complete with a golden clasp to hold all those robes together.

And the lost sheep is a huggable, lovable, white fluffy Little Lamb, a little pet, no different from the Little Lamb that Mary had in the nursery rhyme and that followed her to school.

But shepherds and sheep, in real life, are not like that.

I remember once, on Achill Island, hearing about a shepherd who went down a rock-face looking for a lost sheep, and who lost his life. Local people were shocked – lambs don’t fetch a price in the mart that makes them worth losing your life for.

The sheep survived. But as you can imagine, in the process of being lost, it had been torn by brambles, had lost a lot of its wool, was bleeding and messy. Any shepherd going down after a lost sheep will get torn by brambles too, covered in sheep droppings, slip on the rocks, risk his life. And all for what?

And yet Christ says he is the Good Shepherd who seeks out the lost sheep, in the face of great risks from wolves and from the terrain, and against all common wisdom, as the hired hands would know.

Christ, against all the prevailing wisdom, identifies with those who are lost, those who are socially on the margins, who are smelly and dirty, injured and broken, regarded by everyone else as worthless, as simply not worth the bother.

God sees us – all of us – in our human condition, with all our collective and individual faults and failings, and in Christ totally identifies with us.

Christ has already told those who are listening: ‘I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved … and find pasture … the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have [spiritual] life, and have it abundantly’ (verse 9-10). Now when he speaks of himself as the good shepherd, the image is one that is familiar to those who hear him. True followers, he tells them, recognise the good shepherd.

Perhaps they are prompted to recall that David too had been a good shepherd (I Samuel 17: 34-35), but this was when he lived on the margins, and before he became king. Would they recall the many Old Testament promises that God would come to shepherd his people (Isaiah 40: 11; Jeremiah 23: 1-6; Ezekiel 34: 11)?

When Moses, Aaron and Miriam led the ex-slaves out of Egypt and into freedom, the people learned as they went to appreciate the value of a nomadic life.

They learned, first, that everything is a gift from God, symbolised by the manna, the first Bread of Life. And they learned, too, that worship need not be centred in one place. They came to value Tent over Temple and sheep over settled land. To be a shepherd was a noble occupation – a continuing theme in Jewish history.

Entering the Promised Land, these nomads found themselves surrounded by nations whose powerful elites ruled by subjugating the poor and weak. Yet this new community understood themselves to be completely differently. They were equal partners with each other. And they were equal partners because – as they learned in their wilderness – they were partners with God, the true owner of the land, with God who, as with the manna in the wilderness, called them to share in common all they had.

They had come to value equality and mutual respect. From the beginning, these ex-slaves understood themselves as one people, who lived in an equal partnership with each other and with God by holding fast to the values of the Exodus, when they shared the manna in the wilderness.

But by the time of Christ, however, all this had changed. With the development of a royal aristocracy and the adoption of Temple worship under King Solomon, nomadic values faded and social divisions appeared.

Social strife and class warfare appeared, and any understanding of the land as an equally shared resource belonging to God disappeared.

The kingdom then split into two nations, Israel and Judah, and Judaism split into rival branches. Some were centred on the Temple in Jerusalem, while Samaritan Judaism had its own rival temple on Mount Gerizim. Two kingdoms, two Temples, fear and hatred, injustice and inequality, were in sharp contrast to Christ’s message of radical inclusion, symbolised in Saint Luke’s image of the Good Samaritan and Saint John’s image of the Good Shepherd.

In Christ’s time, shepherds are the dispossessed, the lowest rung of society. They no longer own their own land. And when they longer owned their own sheep they often ended up as the hired hands of the wealthy urban dwellers, the absentee landlords who feature in so many of the Gospel parables.

These hired shepherd-servants depend for their livelihood on work that requires them to be out in the fields and away from their mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters, the family members any honourable man would have stayed home to protect. As a result, shepherds were considered to be men without honour. At best, they were unreliable; at worst they were borderline bandits. Shepherds are despised as much as Samaritans. In this context, a good shepherd, like a good Samaritan, is a contradiction in terms.

As with Saint Luke’s story of the Good Samaritan, Christ uses the image of the Good Shepherd, a despised external ‘other,’ to challenge our preconceptions about others. The invitation is to think about what is really important in human relationships. And Christ’s answer is always the same: compassion, individual moral character, and generous, inclusive action. We are not to condemn by assigning human beings to hated categories.

Christ constantly challenges his followers to live out the Gospel on the margins as he consistently placed himself among those who society had rejected: tax collectors, sinners, Samaritans, shepherds …

He says that he is the ‘good’, the real or proper ‘shepherd’, the one who dies for his ‘sheep’, his flock (verse 11).

But the ‘hired hand’ (verse 12) does not care enough to save the sheep from the ‘wolf’. Old Testament prophets spoke of leaders of Israel in these terms, so Jesus probably speaks of them here – shepherds who are not worthy of the name.

Christ’s relationship to people is like the Father’s relationship with him (verse 15).

Who are the ‘other sheep’ in verse 16? Are they the Samaritans? Are they non-Jews, the gentiles, the nations? They will have equal status with those who already follow Christ, as part of one Church.

Christ has been given the authority to choose to die and the power to rise again from the dead (verse 18). He is in control of his own death and resurrection. A truly Easter theme in the week of the Fourth Sunday of Easter.

Christ the Good Shepherd … a window in Christ Church, Leamonsley, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayers (Monday 27 April 2026):

‘Prayer and Action in Pakistan’ provides the theme this week (26 April to 2 May 2026) in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), pp 50-51. This theme was introduced yesterday with Reflections from the Revd Davidson Solanki, Senior Regional Manager for Asia and the Middle East.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (Monday 27 April 2026) invites us to pray:

Lord, we lift up Pakistan and all who continue to recover from recent floods. Bless the frailest and most vulnerable, and may your presence bring comfort and renewed hope to those rebuilding their lives.

The Collect:

Almighty God,
whose Son Jesus Christ is the resurrection and the life:
raise us, who trust in him,
from the death of sin to the life of righteousness,
that we may seek those things which are above,
where he reigns with you
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Merciful Father,
you gave your Son Jesus Christ to be the good shepherd,
and in his love for us to lay down his life and rise again:
keep us always under his protection,
and give us grace to follow in his steps;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Risen Christ,
faithful shepherd of your Father’s sheep:
teach us to hear your voice
and to follow your command,
that all your people may be gathered into one flock,
to the glory of God the Father.

Yesterday’s Reflections

Continued Tomorrow

Christina Rossetti, by her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti … she is remembered in the Church of England on 27 April 2026

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Martin Noell’s almshouses in Stafford, his legacy in slave-trading and bribery, and his death in the plague

Sir Martin Noell’s Almshouses on Earl Street, Stafford, built in 1660 for 12 poor residents of the townn (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

Close to the town centre of Stafford, Saint Mary’s Church, the courts, Victoria Park and the train station, Sir Martin Noell’s Almshouses form an impressive set of stone buildings on Earl Street. Their small scale contrasts with the large modern block of flats on the opposite corner and the even larger court building next door.

Behind the doors of the almshouses is a hidden chapel. But behind those walls too are stories of slavery and the slave trade, political intrigue and buying office and favour, pirates and debt, plague and death.

Sir Martin Noell (1614-1665) built the almshouses in 1660 for 12 poor residents of the town, and the 12 residents were also given a small pension and a coal allowance from Stafford Corporation.

Noell’s almshouses in Earl Street, also called ‘The College’ or ‘the Old Almshouses’, were built in a Tudor or Jacobean style on a U-plan with a central chapel. This is a group of single storey units with attics, with a central chapel, grouped around three sides of a quadrangle. They have a symmetrical six-window central range, with the chapel breaking forward under a shaped gable with short flanking embattled parapets.

The chapel has a pointed entrance with continuous mouldings in a square-headed architrave, flanking pilasters. A segmental pedimental feature over a drip has a raised panel supporting an architraved panel with the Noell arms, and flanking Doric columns on enriched plinths. The mediaeval stained-glass windows in the chapel are said to have come from the old chapel in Stafford Castle, and in the past the Sub-Rector of Saint Mary’s Collegiate Church held a weekly service there.

The substantial garden in front of the almshouses has shrubbery but no boundary wall, leaving a clear view of the 17th century stone building.

The almshouses have a central chapel with a pointed entrance (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Noell had specific demands about the residents who should benefit from his almshouses. He wrote that one should house an ‘ancient, impoverished minister or some other unblamable Christian qualified with the ability to read and pray daily with the poor.’ Another of the 12 properties should be for ‘a matronly woman who should have an oversight of such as at any time fall sick.’

Noell also made provision for coal and an annual pension for the six poor men and six poor women who were residents. But due to his substantial financial losses before his death, funding for the almshouses and its 12 resident had to be sourced from other benefactors.

The almshouses remained in the hands of Noell’s family until 1691. They were then conveyed to the Mayor of Stafford and four burgesses as trustees, but no ‘alms-folk’ were appointed until 1701. They were later administered by the rectors of Saint Mary’s Collegiate Church and trustees.

The whole building was completely restored around 1866. During alterations in 1925, the front wall was lowered, the old stables and outhouses were demolished, and paving from Bank Passage was taken up and re-laid there. The almshouses were extended in 1960-1962, when the number of apartments was increased from 12 to 23. Today, Sir Martin Noell’s Almshouses are a Listed Grade II* building.

The mediaeval stained-glass windows in the chapel are said to have come from the old chapel in Stafford Castle (Photograph: John Dixon)

Sir Martin Noell (also spelt Noel), the younger son of Edward Noell, a mercer, was born in Stafford in 1614 and was baptised in Saint Mary’s Church on 11 March 1614, when his surname was spelt Nowell. He was MP for Stafford (1656-1659), a London alderman and a successful merchant, entrepreneur and financier who rose to prominence during the Parliamentarian era. He was also notorious for enriching himself through piracy, the slave trade and extracting taxes, and he played a prominent role in Cromwell’s colonial plans.

Noell climbed rapidly from provincial life in Stafford to dominate the transatlantic trade in sugar and other colonial merchandise. He used his brother’s business connections in London and his own marriage to the daughter of a wealthy City draper to enter that trade. While he never travelled far from his London countinghouse, by the late 1640s he was one of the merchant-planters on Barbados, the island at the centre of England’s sugar boom.

After Charles I was executed in 1649, Noell used his contacts to secure lucrative government contracts and to profit from a variety of customs and sales taxes. He collected taxes on salt while he was an investor in salt-production, profiting from both sides of the industry. Oliver Cromwell’s son Richard Cromwell described him as ‘the great salt-master of England’.

Noell’s friend and business partner Thomas Povey said Noell was ‘considerable everywhere … a person of the most spacious interest of any merchant or citizen’ in England’. With his vast financial resources, Noell made substantial loans to Cromwell’s government for its day-to-day running costs, and the Cromwellian regime may have depended on Noell for ready cash and credit more than on any other person. Noell also acted as private money-lender to Oliver Cromwell.

A map of Hispaniola by Nicholas Comberford of Ratcliffe in 1653 … Martin Noell was involved in organising and financing Cromwell’s ‘Western Design’ against the Spanish colony of Hispaniola in 1655

Noell and Povey were involved in shaping government policies on the Caribbean colonies, particularly Barbados. Noell played a leading role in organising and financing Cromwell’s ‘Western Design’ of 1655 against the Spanish colony of Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic), and it is said Noell suggested the ‘Western Design’ to Cromwell.

However, the ‘Western Design’ was a fiasco, partly because profiteering by Noell and other contractors deprived the expedition of vital supplies and equipment. Driven out of Hispaniola with heavy losses, Cromwell’s troops took Jamaica instead.

But Noell, who owned a plantation in Barbados, managed to profit from the failed expedition and was further rewarded by Cromwell with a grant of 20,000 acres in Jamaica. These gave him a major stake in the English sugar industry and the slave trade that was part and parcel of it.

Noell’s plantation in Barbados had a large number of enslaved Africans working with the sugar-canes. He euphemistically referred to them as his ‘Christian servants’. However, after his re-election as MP for Stafford in 1659, the slaves and their conditions in Barbados brought Noell into conflict with other MPs in Richard Cromwell’s Parliament.

Noell was forced to defend himself against accusations in the Commons that he had violated English ‘liberties’ as a contractor by transporting royalist prisoners to indentured servitude on Barbados. The victims of his ‘most unchristian and barbarous usage’ alleged that they been ‘bought and sold … from one planter to another … as horses and beasts’.

Noell admitted transporting prisoners to the island, but denied he had sold them into slavery or that they had been treated harshly. He claimed the labour conditions for indentured servants on Barbados were better than those of the ‘common husbandman here’. The really hard work, the ‘grinding at the [sugar]-mills and attending at the furnaces or digging in the scorching island’ was mostly undertaken by African slaves, he protested.

Noell, who was joint Postmaster General from 1657 to 1659, survived the challenges in Parliament, and he continued to prosper after the fall of the protectorate and the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. The diarist Samue Pepys was surprised to hear that Noell had been knighted on 6 October 1662, but conceded that the Noell was still ‘a very useful man’.

A year later, in 1663, Noell invested heavily in England’s largest slave-trading venture, the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa. He and Povey lobbied in the early 1660s for the establishment of a royal-sponsored West Indian company ‘for the better regulating and improving of foreign plantations’.

Noell was one of the first recorded victims of the Great Plague of London in 1665. Samuel Pepys wrote in his Diary in late September: ‘I hear for certain this night that Sir Martin Noell is this day dead of the plague in London, where he hath lain sick of it these eight days’. He was buried at Saint Olave, Old Jewry, on 30 September 1665.

A commemorative plaque and Sir Martin Noell’s coat-of-arms (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Noell’s debts at his death in 1665 amounted to over £30,000 – over £5.75 million in spending power today – including £1,747 (over £335,000 today) he owed ‘on a contract’ for slaves. Debts led to a major lawsuit by his children that was not settled until 1682.

An inventory of his mansion in St Botolph’s, Bishopsgate, indicates Noell’s taste for exotic objects. The contents of his ‘Green Chamber’ included two cabinets, one of ebony, the other an Indian cabinet set on a frame. Many of the most exotic objects were in ‘Yr Lady’s Chamber or Closet’ and included Spanish tables, ‘Jappan trunks’, five figures of wood, two ‘China jarrs’, a snake’s skin, East India flower pots, furniture decorated with ‘East India beasts and birds’, two pieces of corral and one ostrich egg.

Through his loans and dealing with the Cromwellian regime, Noell drew the state into what had previously been the private business of colonisation and trade in the Atlantic. This marked an important step in developing British bases in the Caribbean and Cromwell’s role in growing a global empire.

Despite founding and endowing the almshouses in Stafford, Noell’s most enduring legacy is his role in colonialism, slavery and the slave trade, a legacy that Britain continues to struggle to come to terms with today.

Despite founding and endowing the almshouses in Stafford, Noell’s most enduring legacy is his role in colonialism, slavery and the slave trade (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The Great Hospital, Norwich, has ‘the most important set of mediaeval hospital records to survive the English Reformation’

The Great Hospital in Norwich was founded as Saint Giles’s Hospital in 1249 and is now a retirement home (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026; click on images for full-screen viewing)

Patrick Comerford

The Great Hospital is a mediaeval hospital or almshouse with a continuous presence in Norwich since the 13th century, and the Great Hospital, with Saint Helen’s Church on Bishopgate, it is one of the historical sites we visited during our recent overnight stay in Norwich. The Great Hospital stands on a 2.8 ha (7 acres) site at a bend on the River Wensum, and close to Norwich Cathedral and the Cathedral Close.

Over 1,000 hospitals of this kind were founded in medieval England, including also Saint John’s Hospital in Lichfield. Yet very few of these hospitals survived the upheavals of the English Reformations. Indeed, only the Great Hospital in Norwich, also known as Saint Giles’s Hospital, now a retirement home for the elderly, has retained both its mediaeval fabric and a major archive.

The archive is said to have no rival anywhere in Britain, and it has been described as the ‘fullest and by far the most important set of British mediaeval hospital records to survive the English Reformation.’ It has a lengthy record of continuous care and most of the extensive mediaeval buildings in the hospital grounds are still in use to this day.

The original beneficiaries of the hospital were aged priests, poor scholars and sick and hungry paupers (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The Great Hospital in Norwich was founded in 1249 by Bishop Walter de Suffield. It was originally known as Saint Giles’s Hospital, and the first Master was Hamon de Calthorpe, who was appointed in 1256.

The original beneficiaries of the new hospital were aged priests, poor scholars and sick and hungry paupers. At the time, priests were unmarried, so they had no families to support them in their old age. The poor scholars – boys chosen on merit from local song schools – were to receive a daily meal during term times, and this was to continue until the boy had achieved a good grasp of Latin. With this help, bright but poor boys were given the chance to train as choristers or even to enter the priesthood.

Thirty beds at the west end of the church were allocated for the sick poor, and 13 paupers were to be fed at the hospital gates each day. As well as the Master of Saint Giles’s, the foundation had four chaplains, a deacon and a sub-deacon.

The hospital was modelled on the Rule of Saint Augustine, which discouraged excessive liturgical ritual so more time could be devoted to charitable works. Nevertheless, the master and the chaplains were bound to sing three Masses a day, including one for Bishop Suffield’s soul, as well as a weekly mass in honour of Saint Giles.

The chancel ceiling in the hospital was lavishly decorated in the late 14th century with 252 panels, each depicting a black eagle. The ceiling was thought to have been painted in honour of Anne of Bohemia, who visited Norwich in 1383 with her husband, King Richard II, and it now forms the ceiling of Eagle Ward which has been preserved.

The internal appearance of the church was radically altered in the 16th century when the east and west ends were partitioned off and divided horizontally to provide two wards at either end. The central area of the church was retained and used for worship as it still is today, being both the chapel of the Great Hospital and the Parish Church of Saint Helen.

The central area of the meidiaeval church is both the chapel of the Great Hospital and the Parish Church of Saint Helen (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Since the mid 19th century, living accommodation has been constantly improved to meet residents’ needs. Five cottages were built in 1849; a sick ward followed in 1889; a further 12 cottages in 1906; and another 17 dwellings in 1937. The 17 cottages built in 1937, now called Suffield Court, were later changed to single-person dwellings.

Substantial changes were initiated by Jack Davies Shaw, Master from 1965 to 1980, when the Great Hospital was modernised, ensuring it was a model community for the elderly going into the 21st century.

The old sick ward was replaced in 1972 by Elaine Herbert House, where an improved form of nursing care was provided. The lodge was finally demolished in 1975. Prior Court opened in 1980 and has 18 single and six double flats designed to accommodate people who need regular support. Saint Helen’s House was converted into eight residential flats in 1986. A new group of cottages were built behind Suffield Court in 1999.

Plans were made to demolish the 12 cottages built in 1906 and replace them with a new two-storey block with 18 flats, Holme Terrace, and six additional flats were added to Prior Court. Saint Helen’s House is currently used as the nursing home, but is not part of the Great Hospital as it was originally a residence separate from the Hospital.

The Great Hospital has one of the smallest monastic cloisters in England; a fine mediaeval refectory; Saint Helen’s House, with excellent examples of Georgian decorated ceilings said to be the work of Angelica Kauffman; an 18th century swan pit; and a large Victorian hall.

In all, the Great Hospital has nine listed buildings: Birkbeck Hall; the Cloisters and West Wall of the former Chapter House; the former Chaplain’s House; the former Master’s House; part of the former Master’s House; the Refectory and part of the former Master’s House; the Lodge; the East Wards; and the White Cottages.

The hospital has had 64 Masters. The first female Master was Dorothy North in 2000-2007, and Gina Dormer is the current Master. The charity nurtures a vibrant and peaceful community of over 60s, supporting the residents to live independently.

The Great Hospital is included in the ‘Norwich 12’, one of the finest collections of individually outstanding heritage buildings in the UK, spanning the Norman, mediaeval, Georgian, Victorian and modern eras.

The Great Hospital encompasses nine listed buildings (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Further reading:

Carole Rawcliffe, Medicine for the Soul: The life, death and resurrection of an English Medieval Hospital, St Giles, Norwich, c1249-1550 (1999)

Elaine Phillips, A Short History of the Great Hospital, Norwich (1999)

Saint Thomas’s Hospital, a mediaeval almshouse in York rebuilt in 1862 and now in apartments

The 19th century buildings of Saint Thomas’s Hospital, York, founded in the late 14th century and rebuilt on Nunnery Lane in 1862 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

The former Moat House Hotel in York on the corner formed by Nunnery Lane and Victoria Bar and beside and Nunnery Lane Car Park is an attractive building that looks older than it is, with an interesting past.

In recent years, the building has been converted into apartments. But a plaque high on the central bay, above the main door hints at the interesting past of the building: ‘St. Thomas’s Hospital re-built AD 1862.’

Mediaeval York had 50 or more hospitals and almshouses. Saint Leonard’s Hospital was once the largest in England – 232 people were housed there in 1399 – and was run by Augustine canons. The hospital was a place for the sick to be healed, an almshouse for the elderly, a refuge for pilgrims, a hostel for travellers and a home for orphans. Parts of Saint Leonard’s, including the vaulted undercroft and ruined chapel above can still be seen.

The other mediaeval hospitals in York included Saint Catherine’s on what is now The Mount, founded outside the city walls as a leper hospital in the early 14th century.

When we are staying in York, I regularly walk past the former Saint Thomas’s Hospital on Nunnery Lane on my way into the city centre. I had already written about other almshouses in York, including Anne Middleton’s Hospital on Skeldergate, Dorothy Wilson’s Hospital on Walmgate, and Sir Joseph Terry Cottages. Now the plaque on the wall of the rebuilt Saint Thomas’s Hospital made me curious about where and when it had been built originally.

Saint Thomas’s Hospital was built in the late 14th century, outside Micklegate Bar, York (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Nunnery Lane leads off Blossom Street which since the Roman period has been the principal route into York from London and the south. The Micklegate Bar leading into the city dates from the 12th century and a horse and cattle market was held outside Micklegate Bar in the mediaeval period in what is now Blossom Street.

The original Saint Thomas’s almshouse or hospital was founded before 1391 as Saint Thomas the Martyr outside Micklegate Bar. It was for the maintenance of poor persons of either sex dwelling in the neighbourhood of ‘Mykyllythbar’, and for hospitality by day and night of all poor travellers and sick poor passing through York. The 15th century seal showed a figure of Saint Thomas Becket as Archbishop of Canterbury, seated in a canopied niche, blessing and holding his crozier.

Saint Thomas’s Hospital was transferred to the Guild of Corpus Christi in 1478, when it was agreed that from then on it would be known as ‘the Hospital of Corpus Christi and of Saint Thomas of Canterbury, and that the Master and Brethren kept seven alms beds.

From then until the dissolution of the guild, the history of the hospital is essentially that of the guild. The master, wardens and brothers of Saint Thomas’s stipulated that they should have the use of their beds and bedrooms there during their own lives and that the brethren of the guild were to ‘fund seven alms beds conveniently clothed, for the ease, refreshing, and harbouring of poor indigent travelling people coming unto the said hospital.’

Saint Thomas’s was one of six or seven mediaeval hospitals or almshouses in York to survive by 1500, while 11 had become extinct or converted to other uses before the Reformation.

The guild kept 10 poor persons in 1546, allowing them 6s 8d each a year, and also maintained eight beds for poor strangers. Following the dissolution of the monasteries and religious houses, the Guild of Corpus Christi was dissolved the following year 1547, but Saint Thomas’s Hospital held on to its estates for almost another 30 years.

After consulting the brethren of the hospital, and showing how difficult it was to maintain the house and its poor residents, the master suggested in 1551-1552 that they should seek the support of the lord mayor and aldermen of the city.

The mayor and aldermen were admitted as brothers of the hospital in 1552, the lord mayor was elected master and two of the aldermen became wardens. For the next 25 years, the lord mayor for the year, and one of the aldermen, with ‘a spiritual man’, continued to fill these offices. Since then, the charity has been in the hands of the corporation.

The almshouses in York that survivved the Tudor Reformations included Saint Thomas’s, Saint Anthony’s, Saint Catherine’s and Trinity Hospital, also known as the Hospital of Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary, at Fossgate. They continued to be run under the auspices of the corporation in the Elizabethan period.

The lord mayor and wardens surveyed Saint Thomas’s, Saint Anthony’s and Trinity Hospitals, as well as Saint John’s Hall in February 1574. A scheme was set up in May 1574 to settle some poor people in the three hospitals and to use them for disbursing charity to other poor people living at home. These people were mainly aged, disabled, or widows, including some widows with children.

When John Marshe and other citizens of London were granted some of the possessions of the former Guild of Corpus Christi in 1576, they were resisted by the master and wardens. William Marshe and William Plummer handed over the property in 1583 to the recorder and town clerk of York, as trustees for the mayor and city of York, for ‘the maintenance and relief of the poor.’

Illustrations show Saint Thomas’s Hospital with Tudor and Gothic windows and two gable ends (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The original hospital stood by the Micklegate on Blossom Street, beside what is now the Puch Bowl. It is shown there on Speed’s map in 1610, on Chassereau’s map of York in 1750 and by Jeffreys in 1776, when it is labelled ‘Thomas’s Hospital’. It is illustrated in 1782 in The Antiquities of Great Britain, among views of monasteries, castles and churches, and was also painted by Moses Griffith in 1785 and again in 1787.

The hospital had been partially rebuilt by 1810, when an anonymous watercolour shows it as a two-storey building with two pitched roof end gables, one with an entrance, fronting Blossom Street and with a a mixture of Gothic and Tudor window.

William Hargrove’s History and Description of the Ancient City of York in 1818, shows it is with a women walking through the Blossom Street entrance followed by a horse and cart, suggesting the Blossom Street frontage had become an inn while the Nunnery Lane frontage continued as the hospital.

A report in 1820 described it as ‘a house in good repair, containing six apartments on the ground floor and the same number above for the habitation of 12 poor women, who are widows … There is a small garden adjoining’. From 1837, it was administered by the York Charity Trustees.

The hospital is seen in a watercolour by Henry Barlow Carter in 1840 and in a coloured lithograph by William Monkhouse in 1845, where the new three-storey Punch Bowl is shown towering over the old, two-storey hospital building.

However, by 1860, the conditions in the hospital were reported to be ‘low, damp, the lower rooms especially, ill-ventilated and dark, with brick floors’, and Saint Thomas' Hospital was demolished around 1862-1863.

The site of the old hospital on the corner of Nunnery Lane has been incorporated into the premises of the Punch Bowl (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The demolition of the old hospital allowed the widening of the junction of Blossom Street and Nunnery Lane. A narrow row of shops were built to replace the hospital building, with a one-bay rounded corner and with four bays facing Nunnery Lane. Since then, this replacement building has been incorporated into the premises of the Punch Bowl.

Meanwhile, a new hospital or almshouses was built further east along Nunnery Lane, close to the newly opened Victoria Bar and opposite the Victoria Vaults. It offered accommodation to 12 women, and there were 11 residents in 1906, sharing stipends totalling £80.

Saint Thomas’s Hospital closed ca 1972 and the building was converted into the Moat Hotel. More recently the building was converted into apartments, but it remains a significant building on Nunnery Lane, close to the Victoria Bar and its original site on the corner of Blossom Gate, close to the ancient Micklegate.

A plaque high above the main door of the building says: ‘St. Thomas’s Hospital re-built AD 1862.’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Queen Anne’s Almshouses in Newport Pagnell date back to 1240 and were rebuilt in 1891

Queen Anne’s Almshouses on Saint John Street, Newport Pagnell … rebuilt in 1891 by the architect Ernest Taylor (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

I was in Newport Pagnell at the end of last week, searching for more examples of the architectural legacy of Edward Swinfen (1841-1924), the Stony Stratford-born architect.

His work in Newport Pagnell includes Lovat Bank on Silver Street (1876-1877), designed for FJ Taylor of Taylor’s Prepared Mustard fame; probably Lovat Lodge, beside Lovat Bank; his alterations to Tickford Abbey in the late 19th century; and the former Bassett’s Bank, now the Post Office on High Street.

But this legacy extends further, to Queen Anne’s Almshouses, a Grade II listed set of buildings on Saint John Street, close to Tickford Street and the River Ouzel. The five almshouses were refurbished and rebuilt in 1891 to designs by the architect Ernest Taylor, a former assistant of Edward Swinfen Harris.

The buildings include a low single-storey wing, containing Nos 34, 36 and 38, which are set back behind a wall on the street line, and a two-storey cross-wing at left or south end, containing Nos 40 and 42. They are built in red brick in Flemish bond with close-studded timber-framing and with a plastered infill to the first floor.

The most interesting part of the almshouses is the two-storey cross-wing, which has a battered base and an end buttress. The upper floor is jettied, carried on timber brackets on stone corbels, and has a deep pulvinated fascia and moulded plasterwork in the lower panels of the timber framing, and a four-light paned window.

Above, a shallow jettied bressumer carries the studded gable end. It has a moulded bargeboards. A painted board applied to the lower panels of the upper floor reads, in dubious period English:

Al yov Christians that here dooe pas
by give soome thing to these poore people
that in St John Hospital doeth ly. AD 1615.

To either side of this painted boars are small slate panels set in the moulded plaster that record the foundations and the periods of rebuilding, its dedication to the people of the town from Queen Anne, wife of James I, and signed in 1891 by the vicar and churchwardens, by the master, the Revd Charles McMahon Ottley, and the governors. The buildings also have a continuous open raised cloister walk.

The Hospital of Saint John Baptist was said to have been founded by John de Somery. The ‘New Hospital’ is first mentioned in a will in 1240. An inquisition of 1245 alludes to the Master of the Hospital of Saint John Baptist among the tenants of Roger de Somery.

Until 1275, the hospital had a master, brethren and sisters. Letters of protection were granted in that year to a master and brethren only. By 1287, the dedication was said to be to Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist. There are references again to a master, brethren and sisters by 1329.

Indulgences were granted to people who contributed to the maintenance of the house in 1301 and 1336. In 1332, the brethren received a licence from the king to collect alms once a year. In 1336 it was stated that the master and brethren had become quite dependent on charity.

From 1387 on, the masters were instituted to the ‘free chapel or hospital’ of Saint John Baptist and Saint John Evangelist.

During the Tudor Reformation, at the Suppression of the Chantries and Hospitals, the commissioners stated that the original intent of the foundation was unknown. The house was down, the chapel sore in decay, and no hospitality had been kept for 16 years. The incumbent was ‘of honest understanding,’ but non-resident.

The hospital or almshouses was re-founded in 1615 for elderly and poor persons of the town, by deed of a charter granted by James I. The charter also changed the name to Queen Anne’s Hospital.

The hospital was rebuilt in 1825, and again in 1891 to the designs of Ernest Taylor, who had once worked with Swinfen Harris. His other works in Newport Pagnell include designing the reredos in Saint Peter and Saint Paul Church.

The Revd Charles McMahon Ottley (1841-1914), who is named on the façade of the almshouse, was born in Preston, Lancashire, to Irish parents, to Charles Saxton Ottley (1814-1862) and Kate (McMahon) Ottley. His Dublin-born father was an engineer working with the Irish Board of Works on drainage schemes, and also worked in England. The family soon returned to Dublin, and lived on Lansdowne Road, Ballsbridge.

The younger Charles Ottley was educated at Trinity College Dublin (BA 1865, MA 1875), and Cuddeston Theological College, Oxford. He was ordained priest in 1865 and was the curate in Fenny Stratford, Buckinghamshire (1865-1868), in Aylesbury (1868-1873), where his widowed mother Kate and sister Mary Adelaide came to live with him, and in Upminster (1873-1875), then in Essex. He became the Vicar of Newport Pagnell in 1875.

Ottley’s parishioners called him ‘the Good Shepherd’, and remained there for 29 years until 1904. He never married and his mother and sister continued to live with him. His mother died in 1876. He moved to Stockcross in Berkshire in 1904 when he was 64. Ottley never got over the death of his sister Mary in 1907 and retired in 1912 due to ill health. He died in Newbury in 1914 and was buried with his sister.

To this day, the Vicar of Newport Pagnell is also the Master of Queen Anne’s Hospital.

The painted board on the lower panels of the upper floor (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Further reading:

FW Bull, A History of Newport Pagnell (1900), p 228.
Nikolaus Pevsner and Elizabeth Williamson, Buckinghamshire, Buildings of England Series ( 2nd ed, 1994), p 579.

Thomas Guy: Tamworth’s generous benefactor, built an almshouse and town hall and rebuilt his old school

Thomas Guy’s almshouses in Lower Gungate, one of the architecturally interesting buildings in the centre of Tamworth (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

When I was back in Tamworth last week, speaking at a family commemoration in the Comberford Chapel in Saint Editha’s Church, I had a few hours for a long walk in the countryside in Comberford.

But I also revisited or saw again some of the interesting historical buildings in Tamworth, including Tamworth Castle, the Assembly Rooms in Corporation Street, the Town Hall on Market Street, the Moat House, the former Comberford family Jacobean town house on Lichfield Street, the former Peel School, nearby, the now-closed Castle Hotel, Lady Bridge, and some of the other buildings associated the Peel family.

Putting aside the Peel families and the families who successively owned Tamworth Castle and the Moat House, the town’s most generous benefactor and philanthropist was Thomas Guy (1644-1724), a former MP for Tamworth who is generally remembered as the founder of Guy’s Hospital in London.

Thomas Guy’s generosity is still to be seen throughout Tamworth: he founded Guy’s Almshouse on Lower Gungate, rebuilt the Free Grammar School across the street where he had once been a schoolboy, and funded building the Town Hall on Market Street. I am also interested in his family connections with Comberford through his mother’s uncle.

Thomas Guy paid built Guy’s Almshouse on Lower Gungate on the site of the former guildhall of Saint George’s Guild (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Guy’s Almshouse on Lower Gungate, is one of the most interesting buildings architecturally in the centre of Tamworth. The almshouses were established in the 17th century by Thomas Guy. Guy’s original buildings dated from 1678 when he drew up plans for a block of almshouses for the maintenance of 14 old women, who received 4s 6d a week, with lodgings, coal, medical attendance and medicine.

Thomas Guy was born in 1644 in Pritchard’s Alley in Fair Street, Southwark. His father, also Thomas Guy, was a lighterman, coalmonger and carpenter with a wharf on the banks of the River Thames. His mother, Ann Vaughton, was originally from Tamworth; she was the daughter of William Vaughton of Tamworth, a member of a very influential family.

For generations, members of the Vaughton family had been bailiffs, burgesses and church wardens in the ancient borough of Tamworth and in Saint Editha’s Church. After Lichfield was captured by the parliamentary forces on Sunday 5 March 1643, two people from Comberford died as they fought on the Parliamentarian side: Richard Vaughton of Comberford was killed as he was building a trench on the west side of Lichfield, outside the Cathedral Close, and he was buried in Saint Editha’s Church, Tamworth, on 21 March 1643; Thomas Riccard of Comberford was slain in the Cathedral Close. This Richard Vaughton appears to have been an uncle of Thomas Guy’s mother, Anne Vaughton of Tamworth.

A sunny April afternoon in Comberford … Thomas Guy’s mother, Anne Vaughton, appears to have been a niece of Richard Vaughton of Comberford, killed in Lichfield in 1643 during the Civil War (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Guy’s father died when the boy was only eight, and his mother then brought him to Tamworth, her home town, along with his younger brother and sister. Thomas was sent to school at the Free Grammar School, then in Lower Gungate.

Thomas Guy returned to London in 1660 when he was 16 to be apprenticed to John Clark, a bookbinder and bookseller in Cheapside. After the restoration of King Charles II in 1660, London was an exciting place. But Guy soon realised that life was difficult for those who were poor or sick, or living in crowded conditions.

Meanwhile, back in Tamworth on 18 June 1661, his widowed mother married Joseph Seeley of Coventry in Saint Editha’s Church, and the couple probably continued to live in Tamworth.

After finishing his apprenticeship in London, Guy started his own small publishing house. The Bible and Oxford University proved to be the mainstays of his business, and he was soon elected a Freeman of the Stationers’ Company and an Alderman of the City of London.

But, as he prospered, Thomas Guy did not forget Tamworth, where he had grown up, or his extended family there – the Ortons, the Woods, the Vaughtons and the Osbornes.

Thomas Guy paid for the refurbishment of the Free Grammar School on Lower Gungate in 1677 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Guy paid for the refurbishment of Tamworth’s Free Grammar School in 1677, and a year later, in 1678, he bought land across the street from the Grammar School. The site on Lower Gungate had been the site of the guildhall of the Guild of Saint George, and there Guy built his almshouses for poor women, with generous provisions for the residents.

The original almshouses were built in 1678 at a cost of £200 and provided housing for seven poor women. Each resident had her own entrance and living room and the large central garden was used to cultivate vegetables. A large library also housed the books of the Revd John Rawlett. The almshouses were extended in 1692 to house men as well as women.

Thomas Guy first stood for election in Tamworth in 1690, but was beaten into third place behind Sir Henry Gough and Michael Biddulph. At his second attempt in 1695, he was returned as an MP with Sir Henry Gough without opposition, and Guy was elected MP for Tamworth six times.

Thomas Guy paid to build the Town Hall in Market Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Guy paid to build a new Town Hall in Market Street in 1701, and it was completed in 1702. The new town hall consisted of one large room supported by three rows of large pillars of stone with semi-circular arches, each row containing six pillars.

The entrance of the room stood at the east end of the hall and the space below was to be used to hold the weekly market. In the centre of the roof was a large wooden glaze lantern with a weather-fane, leading out upon a platform guarded by a wooden balustrade.

But when Guy lost his seat as an MP, he was deeply hurt at being rejected by his own people. He abandoned his plans to build a hospital in Tamworth, either on Albert Road or on Lichfield Street, and he moved his large fortune to London, where he founded what would become Guy’s Hospital.

A dejected Thomas Guy also threatened to pull down the town hall he had built in Tamworth and to abolish the almshouses. The burgesses sent a deputation to meet him in London with the offer of re-election in 1710, but Guy rejected all conciliation, saying Tamworth had been ungrateful to him.

He now abandoned all political ambitions and concentrated on making money to finance his philanthropic deeds in London. He died over 300 years ago, on 27 December 1724 at the age of 80, without ever seeing the completion of Guy’s Hospital in London, which opened in 1725.

Thoas Guy was buried in a vault in Saint Thomas’s Church, Southwark, but his body was moved to the chapel of Guy’s Hospital in September 1780, when the chapel was finally built. He never married and left his fortune to Guy’s Hospital.

Even on his deathbed, the rejection he felt in Tamworth still continued to hurt Guy. He stipulated in his will that inhabitants of Tamworth should not be allowed be accommodated in his almshouses. Only his own relatives, together with poor people from the hamlets of Wilnecote, Glascote, Bolehall, Amington, Wigginton and Hopwas – all areas that voted for him – were to become residents; Comberford is within the parish of Wigginton and Hopwas.

The clock on the front of the Town Hall was presented to the town in 1812 by John Robins, who later bought Tamworth Castle and the Moat House (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Meanwhile, the exterior steps on the town hall built by Thomas Guy were demolished in 1771 and two rooms were added to the rear on the east side. These were replaced in turn in 1811 by two larger rooms, funded in part by the first Sir Robert Peel.

The turret in the centre of the roof was another later addition to the building. The domed cupola with ornate iron weathervane once housed a lantern and also contained a bell to summon fireman. The louvered side of the turret indicate it may once have been used as a pigeon loft.

The clock on the front of the Town Hall was presented to the town in 1812 by John Robins, a London auctioneer claimed Tamworth Castle and the Moat House in lengthy legal proceedings over debts owed to him by the 2nd Marquis Townshend, who died in 1811. Robins moved into Tamworth Castle in 1821, and almost immediately sold the Moat House to Alice Woody and her son Dr Robert Woody.

Guy’s Almshouse was rebuilt in 1912 and 1913 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

In time, Guy’s original almshouse fell into disrepair and the trustees decided it should be replaced. The original buildings were demolished in the early 20th century, and the present buildings were built on the same site.

In 1912, the old residents were moved temporarily to The Paddock – the Jennings family house in nearby Aldergate, later the site of the bus garage. The new almshouses were built at a cost of between £5,000 and £6,000, and opened within a year, in 1913.

The old tablet from Guy’s original building, with an inscription about the foundation, was placed above the main entrance to the new almshouses building. The stone plaque recalls Guy’s pique and original restrictions, declaring: ‘Guy’s Almshouses for relations or Hamleteers.’ This restriction still applies in relation to the boundaries of the borough, as they existed in his day.

The restrictions remain in place: ‘Guy’s Almshouses for relations or Hamleteers’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

How Eros got his name in Piccadilly Square, and the sculptor who refused to attend its unveiling

The statue known as ‘Eros’ in the middle of Piccadilly Circus … ‘a striking contrast to the dull ugliness of the generality of our street sculpture’(Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

When I was still a child, my parents took my elder brother on a holiday to London. I was too young at the time to remember the visit – I think, perhaps, I was still living with foster parents. I say it was a holiday, and that is how Steve remembered it. But it may have been tagged on to one of my father’s business or union visits to London, and was probably a search by my parents for a medical response to Steve’s epilepsy and autism.

He came back from London with a toy red, double-decker London bus, which became his pride and joy, alongside his ‘Bayko’ set, invented by Charles Plimpton, and his toy chemistry set. I remember how he played with his toy red bus as imitated the sounds of a bell ringing and a conductor calling out, ‘Piccadilly Circus.’

Those two words, ‘Piccadilly Circus’, rang out in my ears while I was still a child. But when he went away to school, I was under strict instructions not to even think of touching his red bus. He had probably outgrown his bus at the stage, but – as only a big brother can do – he idly threatened to take my finger prints in case I even dared to touch that Picadilly Circus bus, tucked away in a dark corner of the toy cupboard.

I never found out what happened to that bus. Frankly, I found it all something of a circus, and I never really wanted to play with it anyway, nor with his plastic Bayko bricks or his chemistry set. But the memory of it came back this week as I walked through Piccadilly Circus earlier this week.

The Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain, officially and popularly known as Eros, is a fountain surmounted by a winged statue of Anteros, at the south-east side of Piccadilly Circus. It was designed by the sculptor Sir Alfred Gilbert (1801-1885) was erected in to commemorate Anthony Ashley Cooper (1801-1885), 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, the Victorian politician and philanthropist, and his work to end child labour. The fountain overlooks the south-west end of Shaftesbury Avenue, to which he also gave his name.

Gilbert also designed the statue of the penal reformer John Howard (1726-1790), erected in Saint Paul’s Square, Bedford, in 1890 to mark the centenary of Howard’s death.

Gilbert took five long years to consider how best to commemorate Shaftesbury’s life and work. His final design was an ornately decorated bronze fountain on a nautical theme, topped by a statue reflecting the earl’s philanthropic life. The Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain was originally meant as a public drinking fountain, and the bronze base was supposed to support a dome of water, with a mythical figure of a god appearing to float on the surface of the flowing water.

Although his choice of a nude figure on a public monument was controversial, even at the end of the Victorian era, it was generally well received. The Magazine of Art said it was ‘a striking contrast to the dull ugliness of the generality of our street sculpture’ and contrasted it with ‘the old order of monumental monstrosities’ in London.

The statue has been called ‘London’s most famous work of sculpture’, and it became the symbol of the Evening Standard on its masthead. It was the first sculpture in the world to be cast in aluminium and is set on a bronze fountain that inspired the marine motifs that Gilbert carved on the statue.

Although the statue is generally known as Eros, Gilbert intended it to be an image of that Greek god’s brother Anteros. He had already sculpted a statue of Anteros and, when commissioned for the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain, chose to reproduce the same subject, who, as ‘The god of Selfless Love’ was seen as a suitable representation of the philanthropic Shaftesbury.

Gilbert described Anteros as portraying ‘reflective and mature love, as opposed to Eros or Cupid, the frivolous tyrant.’

The model for the sculpture was Gilbert’s16-year-old studio assistant, Angelo Colarossi who was born in Shepherd’s Bush to Italian parents. Fernando Meacci was involved in the moulding of the fountain and it was cast by George Broad & Son at the Hammersmith Foundry.

The memorial was unveiled by the Duke of Westminster on 29 June 1893. Gilbert’s design for the water fountain was flawed from the start. The base was too narrow, so that instead of water flowing smoothly, it splashed everywhere, creating a mass of mud beside the fountain. Gilbert also designed cups chained to the base so that people could more easily drink, but the cups were stolen almost immediately.

Some critics felt the memorial was sited too close to Soho, then seen as a vulgar part of London with its theatres and brothels; others said it was too sensual a memorial for a sober and evangelical aristocrat.

Some of the objections were tempered by renaming the statue as the Angel of Christian Charity, which was the nearest approximation that could be invented in Christian terms for the mythical role of Anteros. However, the name never became popular ever since the statue has been known as Eros, the god of sensual love.

Gilbert refused to attend both the unveiling of his sculpture in Piccadilly Circus in 1893, and the unveiling of his statue of John Howard in Bedford by the Duke of Bedford nine months later on 28 March 1894.

Gilbert was paid £3,000 for his work in Piccadilly Circus, but it cost him £7,000 to complete. Most of his expenses went towards the richly decorated base of the fountain. He was heavily in debt and was eventually forced to flee abroad and spent 25 years living in Belgium. He never felt his work did enough to commemorate Shaftesbury and even suggested melting down the fountain and selling the material, using the money to build homeless shelters.

The statue and the memorial have been moved from Piccadilly Circus on a number of occasions. It was removed in 1925 to facilitate building work on a new tube station directly beneath. The memorial was put in storage in Embankment Gardens, but was returned in 1931. When World War II broke out in 1939, the statue was moved for safety to Egham, and it returned to Piccadilly Circus in 1947.

The statue was again removed in the 1980s – this time for restoration – and it was re-sited when it returned in 1985. The statue was vandalised in 1990 and after radiography and restoration returned in 1994. A new bow string was fitted to the statue in 2012 after the original had been broken by a tourist.

In the winter of 2013-2014, the statue was covered with a PVC snow globe with internal fans blowing ‘snowflakes’. This was supposed to protect the statue against vandalism, but strong , winds damaged and deflated the globe and it was not never repaired.

Piccadilly Circus was laid out in 1819. In the past, it was described as the heart of the British Empire and it was said that if you stood for long enough in Piccadilly Circus, everyone in the world would pass by. It remains a popular gathering place for tourists and local people alike, but it may be better known today for the theatres, and rthe garish neon signs and video displays rather than Eros or the big red buses.

It was said that if you stood for long enough in Piccadilly Circus, everyone in the world would pass by (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Lady Anne House and the two Terry Cottages, former almshouses, are now part of a York hotel

Middletons Hotel in York includes Anne Middleton’s Hospital, a former almshouse (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

During our weekend say in York, after visiting the site of the former parish church of Saint Mary Bishophill Senior, I walked down Carr’s Lane, a cobbled lane beside the old churchyard, to see two former almshouses that have been incorporated into Middletons Hotel on Skeldergate.

Middletons Hotel is in secluded courtyard gardens within the City walls, and has 56 guest rooms spread over six historic, grade II listed buildings. It is a charming collection of brick houses and pretty gardens, with associations with the past mayors and sheriffs. The buildings are from different periods and in varying architectural styles, and they include Anne Middleton’s Hospital, the Organ Factory and the Terry Memorial Homes.

Lady Anne House is a former almshouse on Skeldergate in the Bishophill area, founded by Ann Middleton in 1659 to house widows of Freemen of the City of York. Dame Anne Middleton was the wife of Peter Middleton, a 17th century Sheriff of York. Middleton’s Hospital had 22 apartments around a small garden and housed 20 widows.

The original hospital was demolished in 1827, and rebuilt further back from the street in 1828 as a two-storey building in brick and stone. It was designed by the York architect Peter Atkinson (1780-1843), and was completed in 1829. The garden walls also date from this period.

The statue on the façade is often identified as Ann Middleton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

In the centre of the façade of the building, a statue of a woman in Puritan dress is sometimes identified as Ann Middleton. The statue is believed to have survived from the original building.

The hospital was endowed with bequests by the founder in 1655, by Thomas Norfolk, George Townend and with a bequest from Lady Conyngham shared by four York hospitals. Later bequests were made by William Monckton, Stephen Beckwith, Mary W Lambert, Green Simpson, Frances Pool, John Richard and Edward Hill.

The hospital had 19 residents at the beginning of the 20th century, and each received a pension of £6 yearly and the use of one room.

The building was modernised in 1939, to house 10 almspeople or residents and a warden. However, the building was in a poor state of repair by 1972. It was bought by the owners of the hotel at 56 Skeldergate, who restored it and incorporated it into the hotel. Since 1997, it has been a Grade II* listed building.

The Sir Joseph Terry Cottages were built as a pair of almshouses (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

The hotel also incorporates the Sir Joseph Terry Cottages or Terry Memorial Homes, built in the front of Middleton’s Hospital in 1899 by public subscription in memory of Sir Joseph Terry (1828-1898).

Terry was Lord Mayor of York on three occasions and was the driving force behind the success of the Terry’s chocolate brand, a major employer in York from 1767. He died in 1898 while he was standing as a Conservative candidate in a by-election in York.

The Sir Joseph Terry Cottages were two brick-built bungalow-type dwellings, built as a pair of almshouses intended for married couples over 60. They are now incorporated in the hotel, with one suite named Chocolate and the other named Orange.

The Sir Joseph Terry Cottages … one suite is named Chocolate and the other is named Orange (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Skeldergate House at 56 Skeldergate, an original part of the hotel, is a Grade II* listed building. The earlier house on the site was bought by Ralph Dodsworth in 1769. When he became Sheriff of York in 1777, he commissioned the architect John Carr to design a new house, large enough to entertain groups.

Dodsworth died in 1796, and the house was let to Thomas Smith, who bought it in 1807 and then sold it on to William Cooper in 1825. His son later brought it into business use. A carriageway was built through the building in 1925 to provide access to the rear yard, involving the demolition of some rooms and a rear service wing.

The house was owned in the mid-20th century by Hans Hess (1907-1977), director of York Art Gallery. He was a Jewish refugee who had fled Nazi Germany. His guests at Skeldergate House included Charlie Chaplin, Benjamin Britten and Cleo Laine.

The house later became a hotel and is now part of Middletons Hotel. The carriageway was filled in, restoring the building to its original appearance, in 1998-1999. As part of the restoration, it became the hotel conference suite, and more recently it has been converted into nine bedrooms and a lounge.

The three-storey building retains its original door and doorcase, much of its original plasterwork, windows and fittings and a late-19th century fireplace. The staircase was completely rebuilt, using some original furnishings.

Skeldergate House was built by John Carr for Ralph Dodsworth in 1769 in 1777 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Cromwell House was built in the late 19th century and was once. It now includes 18 bedrooms, as well as the hotel reception, lounge, restaurant and bar.

The old Organ Factory, with Victorian-style stained glass windows, was originally the workshop of York’s master organ builder Walter Hopkins. He retired in 1921, but many of his masterpieces are still in use in York and beyond.

In all, Middletons has 56 bedrooms spread across six historic Grade II listed buildings clustered around its courtyard gardens in the heart of York.

Sir Joseph Terry was Lord Mayor of York and the driving force behind the success of the Terry’s chocolate brand (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)