I SPY LONDON the definitive DG guide to London's sights-worth-seeing Part 25:The Museum of the Order of St John
Location: St John's Gate, St John's Lane EC1M 4DA [map] Open: 10am - 5pm (until 4pm Saturday, closed Sunday) Guided tours: Tue, Fri & Sat (11am and 2:30pm) Admission: free (suggested donation for tours, £5) 5-word summary: HQ for hospitable medieval knights Website:www.sja.org.uk/museum Time to set aside: two hours
You've no doubt heard of the St John Ambulance, you may even have been put back together by them. But you may not be aware of the Knights of St John, a noble order of medieval crusaders, and the peculiar history that links them to today's armband-wearing first-aiders. A small museum up an arched Clerkenwell sidestreet aims to put that right.
The order dates back to 12th century Jerusalem, established to protect the Holy Land from invaders. Because the St John's crew set up a hospital they became known as the Knights Hospitaller, as opposed to the better known (but less long lived) Knights Templar. After the Crusades were lost the Order of St John retreated to bases on Rhodes and Malta, and in the 1500s set up their English Priory in Clerkenwell. Theirs was the last monastery to be dissolved by Henry VIII, but the gatehouselingered on in a variety of guises and its arch still spans St John's Lane to this day. The surrounding buildings, mostly Victorian reproductions, are now used by the St John Ambulance as their London HQ. And the eight-pointed Order of St John are going strong too, reinvented by Queen Victoria as a Royal Order of Chivalry with a mission to spread Western medical practice to the empire.
As museums go, this one's woefully overlooked. They claim to get 14000 visitors a year, but I suspect many of these are Dan Brown fans who've got their Knights mixed up. When I turned up I was the only visitor, or at least the only person to stay for more than five minutes. I snooped around the three free ground floor exhibitions while I waited for the afternoon tour to begin. One room uses glass cases full of medals and armour (and other stuff) to attempt to tell the story of the Knights of St John. Another smaller room is devoted, slightly more successfully, to the history of the gatehouse and priory. And a third more modern space forms a museum for the St John Ambulance, focusing on the lives of volunteers worldwide who've devoted so much of their spare time to mopping up and making better.
Eventually I was led off on my solo tour. Had I'd not turned up my guide could have taken the afternoon off and gone home with a Lemsip, but instead she led me up the fairly ordinary stairs to... woo, an extraordinary wood-panelled Chapter Hall. It had stained glass windows, chandeliers, the lot - all convincingly ancient until I was told it was an expensive Victorian fake. Then across into the small gatehouse room perched above the middle of the road. In its time this has been the room in which Shakespeare's plays were licenced, the editorial base for Britain's first magazine, a coffee shop owned by Hogarth's father, and the upper room of a pub called the Jerusalem Tavern. Standing here was wonderfully atmospheric, at least until the revelation that the space is now used for committee meetings which dulled the feeling somewhat. We exited down a marvellous Tudor wooden spiral staircase in the gatehouse tower opposite, and then out into the street.
Part 2 of the tour was on the other side of the busy Clerkenwell Road, which didn't exist when the original Priory was here. This is where Clerkenwell's first church used to be, and the outline of its circular nave is still etched into the cobbles outside the ModernPantry restaurant. A not quite-so-old church on the same site was completely destroyed by a direct hit from the Luftwaffe, so the Grand Priory Church here today is an austere post-war cuboid, brightened only by St John's banners hanging from the whitewashed walls. But there's a secret space down below, visible to the public only on tours such as these. It's the original 12th century crypt, perfectly preserved beneath solid foundations, and still used for communions and christenings. It's enchanting down beneath the low ancient arches, a proper step back into the medieval past with an appropriately reverential ambience. And various plaques on the wall of the east transept remind visitors of the site's true meaning, to commemorate the selfless service of millions supporting the weak and needy. by tube: Farringdonby bus: 55, 243
I SPY LONDON
You've no doubt heard of the St John Ambulance, you may even have been put back together by them. But you may not be aware of the Knights of St John, a noble order of medieval crusaders, and the peculiar history that links them to today's armband-wearing first-aiders. A small museum up an arched Clerkenwell sidestreet aims to put that right.
As museums go, this one's woefully overlooked. They claim to get 14000 visitors a year, but I suspect many of these are Dan Brown fans who've got their Knights mixed up. When I turned up I was the only visitor, or at least the only person to stay for more than five minutes. I snooped around the three free ground floor exhibitions while I waited for the afternoon tour to begin. One room uses glass cases full of medals and armour (and other stuff) to attempt to tell the story of the Knights of St John. Another smaller room is devoted, slightly more successfully, to the history of the gatehouse and priory. And a third more modern space forms a museum for the St John Ambulance, focusing on the lives of volunteers worldwide who've devoted so much of their spare time to mopping up and making better.
Eventually I was led off on my solo tour. Had I'd not turned up my guide could have taken the afternoon off and gone home with a Lemsip, but instead she led me up the fairly ordinary stairs to... woo, an extraordinary wood-panelled Chapter Hall. It had stained glass windows, chandeliers, the lot - all convincingly ancient until I was told it was an expensive Victorian fake. Then across into the small gatehouse room perched above the middle of the road. In its time this has been the room in which Shakespeare's plays were licenced, the editorial base for Britain's first magazine, a coffee shop owned by Hogarth's father, and the upper room of a pub called the Jerusalem Tavern. Standing here was wonderfully atmospheric, at least until the revelation that the space is now used for committee meetings which dulled the feeling somewhat. We exited down a marvellous Tudor wooden spiral staircase in the gatehouse tower opposite, and then out into the street.
I SPY LONDON