ABSTRACT
Despite some evidence for the presence of leprosy in later Anglo-Saxon England, it is only after the Conquest that we begin to see evidence for the foundation of leprosy hospitals or leprosaria . Nonetheless, although such institutions have received some attention from academics in recent years, there is still comparatively little archaeological research concerning their origins and early form. This chapter will discuss the nature of early leprosaria . It will consider to what extent English hospitals were imported by the Normans, or whether they were a specific Anglo-Norman response to the escalation of leprosy that was becoming increasingly widespread even before the Conquest. Examples will be drawn from England and the continent, and will focus particularly on the important excavations at St Mary Magdalen, Winchester (Hampshire), one of the earliest excavated examples. This chapter will argue that the English hospitals represented pioneering institutions of social welfare in the first decades of the Norman Conquest, and that the form of many first generation leprosaria contrasted with the hospitals that would later succeed them. It will also argue for the pivotal role of early Norman bishops, such as Archbishop Lanfranc, in the creation of such early charitable institutions in this period.
