The Hospital of St Nicholas From Current Archaeology, No. 140, September/November 1994

The Hospital of St Nicholas lay about 600 metres (1,970 feet) beyond York's city walls, beside the road to Hull. It was established in the mid-12th century, and consisted of a church, St Nicholas, which also served as a parish church until ruined in the Civil War, with a hospital located to its rear. Little was known of its lodgings and other buildings, which fell out of use at the Dissolution of the Monasteries. But where was the hospital? In 1992, a new housing development by Wainhomes (Yorkshire) Ltd provided the opportunity for evaluation of an area likely to have been within the hospital's precinct. The discovery of medieval building remains led to an area excavation, in 1993, directed by Amanda Clarke. Frustratingly, no complete structure was revealed. Within the area available, the team exposed a fine 12th-century aisled building, which subsequently went through a complex process of rebuilding and subdivision, recongnisable through the finely interleaved strata of successive floor levels and building deposits. It is interpreted as the main accommodation block for the hospital's inmates. The position of the rest of the hospital remains a matter of conjecture, though conjecture is now somewhat better founded than before.

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