Charterhouse, Great Hall

Charterhouse, Great Hall, 1880. This photograph was commissioned by the Society for Photographing Relics of Old London to form part of a permanent visual record of historic buildings threatened with alteration or possible demolition in the 1870s and 1880s. Charterhouse, near Smithfield, was built in the mid-16th century on the site of a former Carthusian priory which was dissolved in 1537. In the early 17th century it became an almshouse and school and it continues today as a retirement home for male pensioners, though the school was removed to Godalming, Surrey, in 1872.