Everything about Charterhouse London totally explained
The
London Charterhouse is a former
Carthusian monastery in
London,
England, to the north of what is now
Charterhouse Square. The building is formally known as
Sutton's Hospital in Charterhouse, and is a registered charity. Since the
dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th century the house has served as private mansion, a boys' school and an
almshouse.
History
The Charterhouse was founded in
1371 by
Walter de Manny, in
Smithfield to the north west of the
City of London. It was set up near a
1348 plague pit where many victims of the
Black Death were buried. The twenty-five monks each had their own small building and garden.
Thomas More came to the monastery for spiritual recuperation. The name is derived as an Anglicisation of
La Grande Chartreuse, whose order founded the monastery.
Dissolution
The monastery was closed in
1537, in the
Dissolution of the Monasteries in the English
Reformation. As it resisted dissolution the monastery was treated harshly: the
Prior,
John Houghton was
hanged, drawn and quartered at
Tyburn and ten monks were taken to the nearby
Newgate Prison; nine of these men starved to death and the tenth was executed three years later at
Tower Hill. They constitute the group known as the
Carthusian Martyrs.
Post dissolution history
The site was subsequently used by Lord North and the
Duke of Norfolk as a home.
In
1558, while in the possession of
Lord North, it was occupied by
Queen Elizabeth I during the preparations for her
coronation.
Ricardo Ridolfi was arrested in the House and the
Ridolfi plot of
1571 failed and was followed by the execution of Norfolk
June 2 1572. During this period the Bassano family of musicians, originally from
Venice, also had some involvement with the house.
James I held court here on his first entrance into London in
1603. The Charterhouse was then in the hands of
Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk (son of the executed Duke of Norfolk), but in May
1611 it came into those of
Thomas Sutton (
1532-
1611) of
Snaith,
Lincolnshire. He acquired a fortune by the discovery of
coal on two estates which he'd leased near
Newcastle-on-Tyne, and afterwards, removing to London, he carried on a commercial career. In the year of his death, which took place on the
12 December 1611, he endowed a hospital on the site of the Charterhouse, calling it the hospital of King James; and in his will he bequeathed moneys to maintain a chapel, hospital (
almshouse) and school. The will was hotly contested but upheld in court, and the foundation was finally constituted to afford a home for eighty male pensioners (gentlemen by descent and in poverty, soldiers that have borne arms by sea or land, merchants decayed by piracy or shipwreck, or servants in household to the King or Queens Majesty), and to educate forty boys.
Charterhouse early established a reputation for excellence in hospital care and treatment, thanks in part to
Henry Levett, M.D., an Oxford graduate who joined the school as physician in 1712. Levett was widely esteemed for his medical writings, including an early tract on the treatment of smallpox. Levett was buried in Charterhouse Chapel, and his widow remarried Andrew Tooke, the master of Charterhouse.
The school,
Charterhouse School, developed beyond the original intentions of its founder, and now ranks among the most eminent public schools in England. In
1872 it was removed, during the headmastership (
1863-
1897) of the Rev. William Haig-Brown (d.
1907), to new buildings near
Godalming in
Surrey, which were opened on the
18 June in that year. Since then, the Fourths (students in their first year) visit the Old Charterhouse (two classes per Quarter) as part of their introduction to the school.
Modern history
The buildings were damaged in the
Blitz but are now restored and some
medieval and
16th Century fabric remains. Charterhouse School moved out in
1872, being replaced (till
1933) by the
Merchant Taylors' School, but Charterhouse is still home to senior (male) citizens. The pensioners still occupy their home. The school buildings on the site of the former monastic cloister eventually became the home of the
St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical School, and remain (though now much redeveloped) one of the sites of its successor,
Barts and The London, Queen Mary's School of Medicine and Dentistry. The main part of the cloister garth continues to be a pleasant lawn in the quadrangle of the university site.
The main function of the Charterhouse, which has an annual income in excess of £3 million, is now as a home to 40 male pensioners, known as Brothers. The best known of recent residents was
Simon Raven, the novelist.
Visitor information
The Charterhouse itself may be visited by guided tour only (The Tour Information Line is 020 7251 5002). The tour, usually delivered by one of the elderly gentlemen residents, has been found interesting and pleasing by many visitors. The southern side of the outside is open to view from Charterhouse Square, which is publicly accessible. The university site isn't open to visitors but may be glimpsed from the gates in the NE corner of Charterhouse Square or seen from the Charterhouse tour if it reaches the terrace on top of the former tennis court walkway along the side of the old cloister: this overlooks the entire quadrangle.
The nearest tube is
Barbican but
Farringdon tube and surface rail station is also close.
Local government
Charterhouse was traditionally considered an
extra-parochial area and eventually became a separate
civil parish in its own right. In 1899 it was incorporated into the
Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury, and since 1965 has been part of the
London Borough of Islington.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Charterhouse London'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://london_charterhouse.totallyexplained.com">London Charterhouse Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
