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 C12^th 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.

The building is said to be the chapel of a medieval hospital. As told in Dugdale’s Monasticon (1830), the hospital was founded by Archbishop Thurstan, who died in 1139, and it was initially for lepers.

Pevsner suggests that the hospital for lepers was sited outside the medieval town. The fieldworker was told that the land to the N would flood from the river Ure, which is quite close, but this area where the chapel is stands above that. To the S of the chapel is a public park, and housing opposite is only 19th century, so the site was probably once remote.

Poole’s plate shows decoration in the spandrels of the chevron order round the door, but these include some armorial shields, and the patterns in other spandrels do not look original either. The proportions of the chapel in Poole’s plan look original, but, as McCall says, the building was ‘subjected to considerable transmogrification in the fifteenth century'. Writing in 1917, he described ‘the scalloped capitals of nook shafts’ on either side of the doorway, and ‘chevron and star ornament’ in the arch. There seemed less pattern recognisable in the second visit than in 1998, but this is very dependent on the lighting conditions of the day.

The billet and star patterns in the label, and the shallowness of the zigzag pattern used in the arch, suggest a date in the first half of the century, consistent with the period of foundation. The bell-cote is said to be of the later medieval period.