St. Catherine's Hospital, Rochester

By the end of the eighteenth century it had become an almshouse charity and moved to its present buildings at the top of Star Hill.

In 1315 Symond Potyn left estates to fund the building of "a House with Appurtenances called the Spittell of St. Katherine of Rochester in the suburbe in Eastgate".

This is the leper hospital of which Richard Watts may have been thinking when he banned proctors from the Six Poor Travellers' house.

Amongst other things residents were not to "haunt the tavern or go to ale" which on the surface seems odd as Potyn was the Master of the Crown Inn.

[4] In 1790 Thomas Tomlyn left £2,200 to provide income to the residents and to pay for the building of the present hospital at the top of Star Hill.

In the event that one was not built, which it wasn't, the income was used to provide running costs and to augment St. Catherine's Hospital.

[7] It is a single story building made of red brick set in English bond with a slate roof.

At the outbreak of the Second World War the inmates were evacuated, but by 1940 were requesting permission to return, something that had to await the provision of air raid shelters.