Saltisford with St. Michael's Chapel

Image: © A J Paxton Taken: 29 May 2021

Saltisford is a historic suburb of Warwick stretching along the road to Birmingham. This photo shows the view towards Warwick town centre, with the tower of St. Mary's visible on the hilltop. St. Michael's chapel, on the left, is a listed building on the site of a scheduled ancient monument, St. Michael's Leper Hospital. The church of St. Michael was founded in 1135 and the hospital first appears in the records in 1275. Medieval leper hospitals isolated the sufferers from society and, like other hospitals of the period, offered spiritual more than medical care. Most were suppressed at the Reformation along with the monasteries and chantry chapels which had supported them, and St Michael's hospital is described as being in a ruinous state in 1540. Since then the site has been in private ownership, with the two surviving buildings, the chapel and the house known as the Master's House, used as cottages and, more recently, left derelict. https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1011035 Warwick District Council served a compulsory purchase order on the site in January 2021. https://www.warwickcourier.co.uk/news/people/council-serves-compulsory-purchase-order-warwicks-medieval-leper-hospital-3101841

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