Excavations at the Hospital of St Mary Magdalen, Partney, Lincolnshire, 2003

Abstract

The Hospital of St Mary Magdalen, Partney has seen the first major excavation of a minor rural hospital. Existing by c 1115, it was amongst the earliest hospitals founded in Britain after the Norman Conquest and is one of a class of about 60 sites that were run as cells of larger religious foundations. Excavations uncovered the hospital chapel and its burial ground, as well as timber buildings. Monks/priests and lay people, possibly from the monastic estate, may have been interred in separate locations with different burial rites. Of particular note was a burial in a locked coffin or chest. Partney had ceased to function as a hospital by 1318, when it formed an administrative cell of Bardney Abbey. It was abandoned and robbed in the mid-15th century when the area was given over to agriculture.