This small 14th-century chantry chapel has been an inn, barracks and a museum, and is reckoned Gravesend's oldest building
Access unclearno public right of way confirmed — check locally before setting out
Substantial ruinsruined, but plenty survives above ground
Earl Aymer de Valence built this chapel in 1322 as part of a hospital that cared for people with leprosy, paying for priests to say mass for his soul after death - a chantry, in the language of the time. After its last priests died out unreplaced in 1524, the building became a farmhouse, then by the late 1600s an inn called the New Tavern, before the army built a fort around it in the 18th century and turned the tavern into part of its barracks. During the Second World War, workers converted the chapel’s basement into a gas decontamination chamber. It now sits inside Gravesend’s Fort Gardens, home to a small local history museum, though it’s currently showing as closed. Gravesend Station is a short walk from here.
