The Corpus of ROMANESQUE SCULPTURE in Britain & Ireland
Hospital chapel
Hospital chapel
Dunwich is on the E coast of Suffolk between Swold and Aldeburgh. It was a Roman site and an important Anglo-Saxon port town, and from the late 11thc. until the middle of the 14thc. it was a nationally important seaport. By 1225 it was a mile from N to S, with an area similar to London's at that date, and had seven parishes with 19 churches and chapels, Franciscan and Dominican houses and two hospitals, including this one. By 1242 Dunwich was the largest port in Suffolk, but this changed dramatically after the great storms of 1287 and especially 1328. The latter completely silted up the harbour mouth and flooded the quays, effectively ruining the town as a port, although some fishing survived. The church of St Leonard disappeared into the sea and only 12 houses in that parish were left standing. The parishes of St Martin and St Nicholas lost 225 out of 300 houses between them. Many of the inhabitants left in search of a livelihood elsewhere and this, in combination with another great storm in 1347, when another 400 houses were lost to the sea, further reduced the size of the town. In another storm twenty years later, the churches of St Martin and St Nicholas were lost. The sea continued to erode the coastline, reaching the market place in 1540. The inhabitants stripped the churches and other buildings of their lead roofs and valuables as the sea reached them, and by 1717 St John's, the church of the Knights Templar, the market cross, St Peter's, the Blackfriars monastery and the town gaol were all lost in this way. The last of the medieval churches to go was All Saints. The parish boundaries had been redrawn to bring what remained of Dunwich into its parish, but there were not enough parishioners left to support it, and its last rector left in 1755. It remained in occasional use until the new church of St James was built alongside the Hospital in 1832, after which it was abandoned. It went into the sea between 1904 and 1919, and its last buttress was moved into St James's churchyard before the sea could claim it.
Dunwich is now a small village with houses, a 19thc. church and a public house on a triangle of streets at the edge of the sea. Inland is Dunwich Heath, to the S, and Dunwich Forest and the road to Westleton on the W. The Hospital of St James was built for lepers at the W edge of the town, outside the 12thc. town wall and the earlier Pales Dyke. Its position outside the town and far from the sea saved its chapel from the fate shared by all of Dunwich's other medieval buildings except the Franciscan Friary (Greyfriars) that now stands in ruins on the clifftop. This was founded in 1277 but moved further inland in 1289.
St James's Hospital chapel is now the only 12thc. structure in the village. It stands in the churchyard of St James's, a parish church of 1832 that was built alongside it. The 12thc. chapel is now ruinous and roofless. The E end survives, consisting of a rectangular chancel and an apse, and between them the jambs only of the apse arch. The apse had three windows originally, of which only the N retains its ashlar work. At ground level are the remains of an internal blind arcade, arches only and a few capitals, originally of 12 bays. Ashlar work survives on five bays and part of a sixth on the N, and two bays and part of a third on the S. The central bays are gone, along with the window above them, and all the losses have been consolidated with distinctive flintwork. Only the rubble cores of the apse arch jambs survive. The chancel had blind arcading along the N and S walls too, but of this there are only slight remains at the W end of the N wall and the E end of the S wall. The chancel has one surviving window on the N wall, with cut stonework still in place inside and out.
Hospital chapel
Ripon is a cathedral city and market town in the Harrogate district of North Yorkshire. The chapel of St Mary is a single-cell building with a rectangular plan (see Poole, 1845). The only obvious C12th remains are the outer arches of the S doorway. The stone used for this is a light orange sandstone. According to McCall, the building was refaced in the 15th century and restored from a dilapidated state around 1917; according to Leach and Pevsner (2009), p. 668, it restored again in 1989. Glynne in 1864 records it as 'curious and but little altered', by which he must mean in modern times (see Butler, 2007, 342-3, with two illustrations of its state in 1842).
Features of interest include a blocked doorway and medieval altar slab.