The Lord Leycester, a medieval range of buildings, sits on Warwick’s Westgate, a hop and a skip from the castle. iIs chapel is above the narrow gateway. The chapel was originally built by one of the Norman earls of Warwick on the site of an earlier Saxon one. It was rebuilt in 1383 by the 12th Earl of Warwick – one of the Lords Appellant who opposed Richard II. When Thomas Beauchamp met with the usual fate of men who opposed kings, the chapel was gifted to the Guild of St George. By the 15th century the chapel and the associated site belonged to the amalgamated guilds of Warwick – the Holy Trinity Guild and the Guild of the Blessed Virgin and St George. The United Guilds created a large complex of buildings. The current guildhall was built by Richard Neville a.k.a. The Kingmaker.

Once the Reformation began many guilds lost their lands but in Warwick the guild master passed ownership of the property, and associated rental as far afield as Gloucester and Lancaster to the town’s corporation which meant that the income continued to be used for the benefit of Warwick rather than the king. At one point it even served as Warwick’s grammar school. In 1571, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester established a hospital – somewhere to live- for disabled and infirm soldiers at the request of Queen Elizabeth I. The corporation gave Dudley the guildhall because who wants to irritate Elizabeth Tudor or her favourite. Dudley was keen to please the queen and it raised his credentials as a pious man. The earl ensured that an act of Parliament was passed for the foundation of his hospital – the only private act he ever secured (Howard, p.149) and sent his surveyor, William Spicer to oversee work.

The hospital, which was independent of the town because of its associated with Leicester, accommodated a master, twelve soldiers and their families. It retains its role as an almshouse today but has offered a home to eight retired servicemen since the 1960s rather than the original twelve. When the hospital was first created there was a common kitchen for use by the twelve brethren rather than individual hearths. When Elizabeth I visited Warwick in 1572, the Master of the Hospital was on hand to present her with some verse in Latin to mark the occasion. It was the summer that the Earl of Leicester presented the queen with lavish entertainments as well as matching portraits in a bid to win her hand. The Princely Pleasures at nearby Kenilworth lasted for three weeks.

Meanwhile, the guildhall was used to entertain James I in 1617 and was fortunate to escape the blaze that incinerated much of Warwick in 1694. The courtyard was renovated by the Victorians who added the ornamental gables, plaster bears and Robert Dudley’s crest. The porcupine is the Sidney family crest. Ultimately, it was Dudley’s sister, Mary, who inherited the hospital. Initially the countess of Leicester, Lettice Knollys, claimed some of the estates belonging to the hospital as her dower and withheld the income which belonged to the hospital. (Howard, pp.150-151). It took another Act of Parliament and the support of William Cecil to ensure that the terms of Leicester’s will in the matter of the hospital were honoured.

Howard, Maurice. The Building of Elizabethan and Jacobean England. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007)

The Lord Leycester Hospital guidebook

The Lord Leycester Hospital. An Account of the Hospital of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leycester in Warwick (Warwick: HT Cooke and Sons, 1870).