The red-brick Jacobean quadrangle on the High Street opposite Holy Trinity Church was founded in 1619 by George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, as almshouses for ten poor men and two poor women of Guildford. Remarkably, the institution still operates as almshouses today, with twenty-three flats for elderly people of the parish — one of the longest continuously functioning Jacobean charities in England.
The hospital opens its central courtyard and chapel for occasional public tours; even from the street the gatehouse with its octagonal towers is one of the finest examples of early-17th-century domestic architecture in the south-east.