The gatehouse, chapel and garden of a college of priests founded in the 1420s by Higham Ferrers-born Archbishop Henry Chichele
Open accessfree to visit at any reasonable time
Higham Ferrers was the birthplace of Henry Chichele around 1362, and he went on to become Archbishop of Canterbury. In the 1420s he founded a chantry college in his home town, a group of priests living communally under looser rules than monks, paid to pray for the souls of Chichele and his family. Chichele’s foundation also included a grammar school and an almshouse for the poor and elderly of the town, and at full strength the college kept a master on its books, along with seven chaplains, six choristers and four clerks.
Henry VIII shut the college down in 1542, and its buildings were later put to other uses, serving for a spell as an inn and after that as a farm cottage and granary. The Ministry of Works, a forerunner of English Heritage, took over what survived in 1948. The gatehouse and much of the east range still stand to their full height facing the road, and the chapel, though altered, keeps its roof and a large blocked window at its east end, with carved stone heads, probably added after the college closed, set into both its inside and outside walls.
The walled garden, set out in 1425, is rare for a college like this, and there’s no charge to walk round it; the chapel and the rest of the interior open only occasionally, for exhibitions and events, mostly in summer. The River Nene runs close by on its way through the town, and the nearest railway station is at Wellingborough, a few miles west.
