Explore Pontefract’s past with new digital experience
Tuesday, September 02, 2025
Wakefield Council is launching a new project which will digitally recreate the Pontefract Hermitage and Dispensary, allowing a new generation to explore the historic site.
Working with local digital specialists One to One Development Trust, alongside Pontefract Civic Society and Pontefract Heritage Partnership, the project will create a digital experience to celebrate and share this important and unique part of Pontefract's heritage.
“The Pontefract Hermitage and Dispensary is a unique and hidden part of the district’s heritage and we’re really excited to see it brought to life once again through this digital project.
“To help us recreate such an important part of the town’s history, we’re looking for people who perhaps worked at the dispensary or were a patient there. Or maybe you visited the hermitage. Please come along and share your stories and photographs with us.
“Until the dispensary closed there was access to the hermitage through the cellar of the building, but this is no longer possible. So, your memories are crucial to helping us recreate the site so that it can still be explored by present and future generations.”
Cllr Hannah Appleyard
Cabinet Member for Culture, Leisure and Sport
Pontefract Dispensary was opened in 1880. Over the next century it served the people of Pontefract as a hospital, later part of Pontefract General Infirmary. It was bult in the garden of a 14th century hermitage, with the hermitage itself preserved underneath the new building. The Dispensary closed in 2011.
Those with memories or photos of the Pontefract Hermitage and Dispensary are invited to come along to a free drop-in event at Pontefract Museum on Saturday 20 September, between 11am – 2.30pm. Find out more at https://www.heritageopendays.org.uk/submission-event/pontefract-dispensary-and-hermitage-story-share.html
The project is part of the Our Heritage Our Stories project with funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.