St. Peter's Hospital, Bristol

St Peter's Hospital
Watercolour of St Peter's Hospital, Bristol, former headquarters of the Bristol Corporation of the Poor, 1894
Location within Bristol
Former names	The Sugar House, The Mint
General information
Architectural style	Jacobean
Town or city	Bristol
Country	England
Coordinates	51°27′19″N 2°35′22″W / 51.455174°N 2.58951°W / 51.455174; -2.58951
Construction started	Seventeenth century
Demolished	1940, Bristol Blitz
Client	Robert Aldworth
Technical details
Structural system	Timber frame

St Peter's Hospital, Bristol could be found to the rear of St Peter's church until it was destroyed in the Bristol Blitz in 1940. 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.

The old Bristol Mint was then bought by the Corporation in 1696 for £800 to be used as a workhouse for the Bristol Corporation of the Poor and it is in this role as a paupers' workhouse that the building is much better known. It was later called St Peter's Hospital as in 1820 85 inmates looked after 306 sick ones. After the cholera outbreak of 1836, the corporation of the poor rented the defunct prison at Stapleton, thereby founding Blackberry Hill Hospital.

St Peter's Hospice, established in 1969, is named after St Peter's Hospital.

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 (online catalogue).