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Charterhouse, London

Historical Description

Charterhouse, a district in London, near Aldersgate Street and Smithfield, — of a mile N of St Paul's. It includes a square and gardens, comprises 10 acres, and extends slightly into the extra-parochial liberty of Glasshouse yard. It was purchased in 1349 by Bishop Stratford to be a burial-place for victims of the plague, became the site in 1371 of a Carthusian priory founded by Sir Walter Manny, passed in 1537 to the Crown, and was purchased in 1611 for £81,217 by Thomas Sutton, to be made the place of a public school and an asylum for eighty poor gentlemen. Of the priory scarcely anything remains except the south wall of the nave, now part of the chapel. The school numbers among its famous pupils Bishops Monk and Thirlwally Judge Blackstone, Lord Chief-Justice Ellenborough, Dr Barrow, Addison, Steele, John Wesley, Grote, the Earl of Liverpool, Sir Charles Eastlake, Thackeray, and General Havelock. In 1872 the school was removed to Godalming in Surrey, and the Merchant Taylors bought the site and erected there a new building for their school. This is divided by a wall from the old part of the building, which is still used by the eighty "poor brethren " of the Charterhouse.

Transcribed from The Comprehensive Gazetteer of England & Wales, 1894-5

Visitations Heraldic

The Visitation of London, 1568 is available to browse from the Heraldry page.

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