In 1660 Dr. Mapletoft, of Pembroke College, Cambridge, being appointed Sub-Dean of Lincoln and also Master of the Spital Hospital, at once rebuilt the chapel and set to work to improve the revenue, and when he became Dean of Ely in 1668, he retained his Mastership of Spital, and so well did he and his next-but-one successor, Chancellor Mandeville do their work, that, whereas it had sunk to a master and two poor persons to whom he paid 2s. each, they restored it to its complement of seven poor people and bought land for it, which so increased in value that, when the Charity Commissioners took the Spital in hand in the reign of Queen Victoria, the revenues were estimated at £959, which was nearly all of it being misappropriated.

Wykeham Chapel, near Spalding.

THE NEW SCHEME

MAPLETOFT’S INSCRIPTION

In 1858 a new scheme was drawn up, and now seven alms-people of each sex receive £20 a year, and besides other annual payments £5,500 has been spent out of the Spital funds on the Grammar School at Lincoln and on founding and maintaining a middle-class school at Market-Rasen called after the Spital’s founder The De Aston School. Of the old hospital at Spital only the chapel built by Mapletoft in 1662 remains; a plain structure with its east end to the road where the entrance door is, the altar being at the west end. Below the small square bell-cot is a stone bearing this inscription:—

Fui Aᵒ Dni1398⎫Domus Dei et Pauperum
Non Fui1594⎬
Sum1616⎭

Qui hanc Deus hunc destruat.
G.P. 1830.

This means:—

I was in1398⎫The House of God and of the poor
I was not in1594⎬
I am in1616⎭