ABSTRACT
A London 'inn' or hospicium, a sort of pied a terre, became essential for a bishop from the thirteenth century. Dr Schofield found 20 bishops and 22 abbots as having London houses: only one Welsh bishop, of St Asaph, apparently never had one. Almost all our information on the situation of these inns comes from John Stow's Survey of London which tells us where houses had been, since by that time most bishops had been forced to give them up, covetous eyes having been cast on such valuable sites at the Reformation. Of all the London houses only at two, Lambeth, still in use, and the Winchester House fragments at Southwark, are there sufficient remains to make a real description possible. One of the advantages of having a house on the right bank was that there was almost unlimited space: the archbishop of Canterbury had deer park at Lambeth, so did the bishop of Durham later further upstream at Battersea.
