Locko Preceptory

Locko Preceptory was a small religious house run by the Order of Saint Lazarus, a medieval order that cared for lepers. It stood on a moated site just north of Spondon in Derbyshire, close to a crossroads and beside a spring called St Ann’s Well. The preceptory included a church, hospital buildings and outbuildings, with fishponds and farmland around it. It was the only recorded Lazarite preceptory in England. The name Locko comes from the French word for bandages, recalling its use as a leper hospital. The preceptory began after William de Ferrers, Earl of Derby, gave the church of Spondon to the order in 1080. By 1274 the hospital owned forty acres at Locko and held manors at Spondon and Locko. Its annual income reached about £77 in 1291, though a third went to the order’s French mother-house. After the Earl of Derby’s rebellion in 1266, records mention a preceptory and leper hospital at Locko dedicated to St Mary Magdalene. In 1340 a great fire destroyed much of the estate, and war with France brought further trouble. Today the site lies within the grounds of Locko Park, an 18th-century country house. The preceptory once stood at the rear of the hall, near the moat and spring. Little remains of the medieval buildings after the fire, but the setting still reflects its original purpose. Visitors walk past the old moat and well on the estate, imagining the leper hospital and brethren who once lived there. The parkland preserves traces of the order’s fields and fishponds. The place offers a quiet reminder of medieval charity and the Order of Saint Lazarus.