Nine centuries of service

This year, two connected institutions in the heart of London celebrate their 900th anniversary. In the second of two articles, John Goodall looks at their foundation story

- John Goodall

St Bartholomew's Hospital, Smithfield, London EC1, part II The property of Barts Health NHS Trust

ST BARTHOLOMEW’S HOSPITAL— or Barts, as it is familiarly known —celebrates its 900th anniversary as a living and working institution this year. No other major hospital in Britain —or perhaps in Europe—can claim such extraordinary longevity. Over that immense period, the hospital has changed beyond recognition in physical and institutional terms, but the site and the fabric of its buildings, as they appear today, embody an extraordinary story. They have touched the lives of untold numbers of Londoners at critical moments of need.

As we heard last week, the hospital shares its foundation anniversary with the neighbouring church of St Bartholomew-the-Great. The church was likewise begun in 1123 by one Rahere as the priory church of a community of Augustinian canons. Rahere governed both the priory and hospital, but, at his death, the institutions assumed a degree of independence without wholly breaking apart. The result was four centuries of episodic quarrelling over such privileges as the ringing of bells, rights of burial, the procedure of elections as ‘proctor’ or master of the hospital and the possession of votive images of St Bartholomew.

Frustratingly little is known about the early-12th-century hospital. The only documented building constructed for it in Rahere’s lifetime was a chapel, to which he gifted a relic of the Holy Cross. Its work was dependent financially on the priory and the generosity of Londoners. Indeed, the first hospital proctor, Alfhume, reputedly spent his time in markets begging for food that he could distribute to the poor. Only from 1175 did it begin to acquire property independent of the priory.