These slits in the wall inside St John’s Church on Westgate Road are an Anchorite’s Squint. Anchorites and anchoresses had themselves bricked up inside a tiny cell and spent the rest of their lives in prayer and contemplation, the Squint is near the altar and enabled them to watch the services at the church.
There was a window at the back of the cell that overlooked the churchyard, from which the anchorite or anchoress received food and dispensed religious advice to passersby.
The name of only one of its inhabitants has survived in the records. In 1260, an anchoress called Christina Umfred was “admitted to a place of enclosure in the churchyard of St John’s Church to inhabit for her life”.