Cogan Hospital (later St Aucher’s Charity) was the foundation that gave a home
to the indigent widows of the clergy, including Sarah Johnston in 1877.
But the house itself, the oldest non-ecclesiastical house in Canterbury, has a long tale of
its own to tell before the Hospital was even thought of.
Luke the Moneyer (an authorised coiner of the currency) built the on the site in
1200, one of the few stone houses in Canterbury to survive, and it then passed to
William Cokyn, who bequeathed it in his estate at his death in 1203 to be used as
a hospital, and a large hall was added. After serving as a residence for the mayors
and bailiffs of the town, it became the home of John Bygg in 1473, mercer (silk-
worker) and Mayor, who added a beamed medieval hall.
It was the Tudor mansion of John Thomas in 1528 and then the Jacobean one of
Ralph Bawden around 1600, with a jettied (overhanging) frontage, a parlour
downstairs and a bedchamber above. In 1626, John Cogan, who may have been a
descendant of William Cokyn, lived there until 1657; his estates were in
Littlebourne, 4 miles from Canterbury, and their proceeds founded the Hospital
in his name that remained at 53 St Peter’s Street until 1870.
Some of the endowments, however, came from lands taken from their Royalist
owners during the Puritan rule in England in the 1650s: in 1660, when the
monarchy was restored and these lands had to be returned, the Hospital was left
in a poor financial position, saved only by John Aucher’s bequests 40 years later.
John Bygg’s hall had a moulded oak ceiling, and the Tudor wood panelling John
Thomas installed showed his pastimes of hunting and bear baiting and the
implements of his hosier’s (stocking-maker’s) trade, with his own face hidden in
the carvings; images of vines and grapes and his wife’s face still survived on the
staircase in John Cogan’s house. Ralph Bawden, a glove-maker who was Mayor in
1584 and 1603, installed fantastic lime plaster work on the ceilings of the
parlour and bedchamber, including a Tudor rose frieze and geometric and
foliage designs. A pelican in piety (feeding her young with the blood drawn from
her own breast which she had speared with her beak) and a griffin, a symbol of
divine power, were carved corbels (supporting brackets) on the front of the
house.
In 1870, when the inmates of the hospital moved to Aucher Villas in London
Road, Cogan House was sold to Thomas Wells, ‘tailer and outfitter’, who removed
the jettied overhang, installed a red-brick frontage and large glass windows on
the street and turned the parlour into his shop. He moved the pelican and griffin
into his new entrance hall and made stabling for his horse, which pulled a
delivery van around the city and countryside for many years. From the later
1930s, it became a private house again and is now an Italian restaurant with
some of the historic fabric displayed in its modern decor.
Thanks Barbara!
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