Almshouse, Guild and Town Community: The Lord Leycester Hospital in its Urban Setting

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This PhD project focuses on the Lord Leycester Hospital, a Warwickshire Almshouse, founded by Robert Dudley in 1571. It explores how this elite philanthropic organisation operated within local, regional, and national frameworks over its first century, questioning how far its relationship to the town of Warwick was reciprocal, complementary, contested? The history of the Lord Leycester Hospital and its buildings stretch over 700 years. Its buildings are one of the most intact examples of medieval buildings in England, and thus carry with them a huge cultural significance and architectural value that attracts tourists and visitors to Warwick every year. In 1571 it was founded as an almshouse for former servicemen, who continue to live in the Hospital's apartments and benefit from its philanthropy. However, it was intended to be independent of the town, with only some Warwick residents as its beneficiaries. As a result, relations with the town corporation, Warwick Castle (owned by Dudley's brother), and the churches of St Mary's and St Nicholas were often strained. It was not only a rival institution to local parish poor relief, but also founded by an external patron with radical Protestant leanings. The connection of the Hospital to 'Puritanism' would have sat uncomfortably alongside the more moderate Church of England course adhered to by the majority of the town's residents, not to speak of those retaining Catholic beliefs. This project therefore sets out to investigate the relationship between this almshouse and its urban setting at a time of fundamental religious and socio-economic change.