Churches of the British Isles

Otherwise penniless, they must have been granted the land. They gradually built up a large friary, with a friary church standing a little under thirty metres inside the Cattle Market area. It ran from south-west to north-east, at approximately right angles both to New Street and Rope Walk. A large building, it had a twenty-seven metre-long nave which ran into an eighteen metre quire. The friary was dissolved in 1538 and its materials gradually appropriated for new buildings.

All that visibly remains of St John's Hospital is a row of almshouses which is set behind the United Reformed chapel (see below). They shield from view the surviving small hospital building itself. A foundation year is not known for the hospital, although one deed is dated 1287. It survived the Dissolution and, in 1837, charity commissioners reported that there was a master and six brothers and sisters there, with the mayor having the right to make appointments.

Sandwich United Reformed Church is behind the Cattle Market in the centre of the town. An early Dissenting society formed in Sandwich in 1640, meeting from 1643 in a small chapel building which was located on the site of a former Canterbury pilgrim's inn behind the Guildhall (seemingly a stone's throw from the current site). The present meeting house was purchased in 1705, and converted into a dedicated chapel for 1706, known as the Dissenter's Meeting House.

The chapel quickly became better known as Sandwich Independent Chapel in the 1700s, with two Huguenot-supplied ships' mast wooden pillars in the chapel's centre. By the 1800s it was Sandwich Congregational Chapel. The premises were extend in 1897 with a new floor, roof, and pine seats. In the 1970s the church hall was demolished and the church converted into a dual-purpose building. It became a United Reformed chapel at the 1972 union.

The lost St Thomas Hospital had its main building at the Moat Sole corner of what is now the dental surgery and No 22, facing the Cattle Market car park and the rear of the southern Guildhall shopping area. Licence was granted in 1392 for the founding of a hospital at Sandwich in honour of St Thomas the Martyr. It and its associated almshouses (shown here) survived the Dissolution and the hospital was still operational in 1562. The almshouses survive to this day.

All photos on this page by P L Kessler & M Kessler in 2010 & 2025.