Researching the history of charity buildings
Medieval hospitals were almost invariably run
by the Church along monastic lines. Most of
them were in effect almshouses, rather than caring specifically for the sick.
For the development of medieval hospitals see Heritage of Mercy. They were
included in some surveys of ecclesiastical
property and records pertaining to them may also appear in monastic
cartularies or bishop's
registers. In a few cases some of the hospital's own records survive from
the medieval period, in which case they may be published by a local record
society.
Subsequently hospitals, almshouses, orphanages, schools, workhouses and asylums were generally run by the local corporation or parish, or by trustees, whose archive may be deposited in the local record office, or retained by the relevant body. Such archives could include accounts and other administrative records, and cartularies and leases of property belonging to the charity and providing an income for it. For more on schools see educational buildings.
Some 40 hospitals in Great Britain were built by companies for their workers (see Wardropper below). Medical hospitals were taken over by the state under the National Health Service Act of 1946. The records of hospitals in the UK can be located through the Hospital Records Database provided by the National Archives.
Studies and Gazetteers
Engraving in 1829 after Thomas H. Shepherd of the newly-built John Watson's Hospital, Edinburgh, now the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art
- Caffrey, H., Almshouses of the West Riding of Yorkshire, 1600-1900 (2006). Includes gazetteer with references.
- Clay, R. M., The Mediaeval Hospitals of England (1909).
- Higginbotham, P., The Workhouse. Online study of the British buildings where employment was provided for the destitute. Includes a gazetteer.
- Low, S., The Charities of London in 1861 (1862).
- Medical Heritage of Great Britain: online gazetteer provided by Bath and Wessex Medical History Group.
- Morrison, K., The Workhouse: A study of poor-law buildings in England (English Heritage 1999).
- Orme, N. and Webster, N., The English Hospital 1070-1570 (1995). Includes sourced gazetteer of medieval hospitals in Cornwall and Devon.
- Pevsner, N., A History of Building Types (1976), chap. 9: Hospitals.
- Poynter, F.N.L., The Evolution of Hospitals in Britain (1964).
- Prescott, E., The English Medieval Hospital 1050-1640 (1992). Includes gazetteer of survivals.
- Richardson, H. (ed.), English Hospitals 1660-1948: a survey of their architecture and design, RCHME (1998). Includes gazetteer of sites recorded by the RCHME, giving simply the name, location and index number to the relevant file in the NMR.
- Thompson, J. D. and Goldin, G., The Hospital: A Social and Architectural History (1975).
- Wardropper, J., Hospitals built by the owners of industry, for their workers, in Great Britain 1840-1950, Rosetta 1 (Autumn 2006.)
Charity Commission
Following the first Charitable Uses Act in 1597, national government made periodic enquiries into local charities. The findings are in the National Archives (indexed in Lists and Indexes 10). The Charitable Foundations Act of 1819 set up a national commission of enquiry, whose many volumes of published reports by counties became a directory of charities, with a mass of detail on their history and funding. It is worth checking whether the volume of interest to you has been digitised by Google, for example A Digest of the Reports made by the Commissioners of Inquiry into Charities [for the] County of Middlesex including London (1841) can be read online. The permanent Charity Commission of England and Wales was formed by the Charitable Trusts Act of 1853. This Act decreed that the accounts of charities should be deposited with the relevant county officers, so they can be found from this date in county record offices.