Page 170 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - London

168  L ONDON AREA B Y AREA

continued to be sold here
until the mid-19th century.
It now confines itself to
whole sale trading in meat
and poultry. It was originally
sited in Smith field, outside the
city walls. Although moved
to its present location in
Charterhouse Street in the
1850s and called the London
Central Meat Market, the original
name stuck. The old buildings
are by Victorian architect
Horace Jones, but there are
20th-century additions. Some
Smithfield Market, now officially known as London Central Markets pubs in the area keep market
hours, serving hearty breakfasts
1 Museum of the were converted into a hospital from dawn. After much-needed
Order of St John for poor pensioners, and a modernization, the market is
charity school – called now one of the best equipped
St John’s Lane EC1. Map 6 F4. Charterhouse – whose pupils meat markets in the world.
Tel 020 7324 4005. 1 Farringdon. included John Wesley (see Visitors should aim to arrive
Open Jul–Sep: 10am–5pm daily; p172), writer William Thackeray by 7am.
Oct–Jun: 10am–5pm Mon–Sat. and Robert Baden-Powell,
Closed Christmas week & bank founder of the Boy Scouts. In
holiday weekends. 8 11am & 2:30pm
Tue, Fri, Sat (donation). = 7 limited. 1872, the school, now a top
∑ museumstjohn.org.uk boarding school, relocated
to Godal ming in Surrey. Part
The Tudor gatehouse and parts of the original site was
of the 12th-century church are subsequently taken over by
all that remain of the priory of St Bartholomew’s Hospital
the Knights of St John, which medical school. Some of
flourished here for 400 years the old buildings remain,
and was the precursor of the including the chapel and
St John Ambulance. Over the part of the cloisters. Today
years, the priory buildings have Charterhouse is still home
had many uses, such as offices to more than 40 pensioners,
for Elizabeth I’s Master of the who are supported by the
Revels and a coffee shop run charitable foundation.
by the artist William Hogarth’s
father. The museum of the order’s
history has been renovated to 3 Smithfield
create an exhibition space Market A 17th-century townhouse on
showing hidden parts of the Cloth Fair
gate house and a learning Charterhouse St EC1.
space in the priory church. Map 6 F5. 1 4 Cloth Fair
The rest of the building can Farringdon, Barbican. EC1. Map 6 F5. 1 Barbican.
be seen on guided tours. Open 2–9am Mon–
Fri. Closed public hols. This attractive street is named
∑ smithfield after the notoriously rowdy
2 Charterhouse market.com Bartholomew Fair, which was
Animals have been the main cloth fair in medieval
Charterhouse Sq EC1. Map 6 F5.
1 Barbican. Open for 8 traded here since and Elizabethan England, held
2.15pm Tue–Thu and alternate the 12th century, annually at Smithfield until
Sats, book well ahead (see but the site was 1855. Nos. 41 and 42 are fine
website for details). granted its first examples of 17th-century
∑ thecharterhouse.org official charter in architecture and have
1400. In 1648, it was distinctive two-storey wooden
The Tudor gateway on the officially established bay windows, although their
north side of the square as a cattle market ground floors have since been
leads to the site of a former and live cattle modernized. The former Poet
Carthusian monastery, which Laureate John Betjeman, who
was dissolved under Henry Stone carving stands died in 1984, lived at No. 43 for
VIII. In 1611, the buildings atop Charterhouse most of his life.

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