The Hospital of St Thomas the Martyr upon Eastbridge was founded in 1190 by Edward FitzObold, a local merchant, to provide accommodation for pilgrims visiting the tomb of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, slaughtered in the Cathedral in 1170.
According to Doel & Doel (2018, 21), it was refounded in 1342 by Archbishop Stratford; in 1569 it became a school for twenty boys (this lasted until the 1880s); in 1584 it was reformed by Archbishop Whitgift to offer “accommodation for ten poor people of Canterbury and a dole of food for ten more.”
If you go through the door in the centre of the photograph there is a small hall with steps down to the Undercroft, where the pilgrims slept in cubicles. Over this was the Refectory, where they would be fed, and above that a chapel. The lead structure poking out of the roof is a cage for a bell.
The hospital is now an almshouse for the elderly.
Behind the hospital is the Franciscan Garden, a secluded, walled garden which was originally part of the Franciscan Friary founded in about 1250. The only building remaining from the friary, built in about 1267, is the Greyfriars chapel.
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