Sutton's Hospital
| Page | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
Charterhouse was founded by Thomas Sutton in 1611. Sutton was born in 1532 and became a civil servant and astute businessman.
For 25 years he was Master of the Ordnance in the North and held the manors of Whickham and Gateshead just outside Newcastle. This gave him access to the area's prosperous coal mines, and he later expanded his wealth by successful money-lending - which was, by then, legal, but still perhaps a less respectable profession than today's merchant banking.
Sutton's long cherished wish to found a benevolent institution was realised when he bought Howard House from the Earl of Suffolk. This was built on the site of the fourth English Carthusian Monastery, founded in 1371 by Sir Walter de Manny and the Bishop of London on the outskirts of the City of London. The monastery was dissolved by Henry VIII, though some of the buildings remained.
The order of monks who inhabited the monastery were those of La Grande Chartreuse from near Grenoble in France, and the anglicising of their name led to "Charterhouse" being applied to their English monasteries, and this name remained attached to the site in London.
Clicking the pictures in this section will open a larger version in a new browser window.
|
|