A house had stood on that site since approximately 1400 and the hospital was a timbered, gabled mansion.

In 1607 the building was bought by a rich merchant named Robert Aldworth who went about completely rebuilding it.

In later years (circa 1634) it passed into the ownership of Thomas Elbridge and later still for a short period of time the building was the Bristol Mint.

After the cholera outbreak of 1836, the corporation of the poor rented the defunct prison at Stapleton, thereby founding Blackberry Hill Hospital.

[4] While many of the registers and records of St Peter's Hospital were destroyed when the building was hit by an Incendiary device during the Bristol Blitz other papers, photographs and documents related to the site and the institution survive, and are held at Bristol Archives.