From 1050-1350 marked a particularly active phase of the disease that made necessary the introduction of large-scale specialist and institutional care in England.

Archaeological evidence was uncovered in 2010, in what may be England’s earliest hospital. The site was a hospital for leprosy located at St Mary Magdalen, Winchester, Hampshire. Radio carbon analysis revealed burials took place between AD 960-1030. Previously, the earliest known hospital in England was founded in the 1070s in Canterbury following the Norman Conquest.