In Norman England there was a nobleman called Jordan de Briset who owned part of Clerkenwell by holding it by ‘knight’s service’, which meant that instead of paying money for it he had to provide a certain number of knights fully equipped for battle if the king required it. In 1144 he gave the land to the Order of St John of Jerusalem. They were a kind of militant religious order established during the Crusades. They set up a monastic foundation – a priory – on the land. The land itself covered the area today bounded by Cowcross and Turnmill Streets in the south and west, St John Street in the east, and Aylesbury Street in the north.
The only evidence you can see today of the existence of the Priory is St John’s Gate in St John’s Square. This gate was built in 1504 by the head of the Priory at the time, Prior Docwra. It was known then as the Great Gate. The Order of St John, in one incarnation or another, has occupied St John’s Gate for much – although not all – of its life.
Building St John’s Gate as the lavish entrance to the priory was the last great project of the Order before it fell victim to Henry VIII’s ‘Dissolution of the Monasteries’ when he renounced the Roman Catholic Church over the Pope’s refusal to give him a divorce from Catherine of Aragon so he could marry Anne Boleyn. The Dissolution of the Monasteries took place between 1536 and 1541 during which the Order’s wealth was seized by the Crown.
St John’s Gate remained, but it led nowhere. Over the next two centuries there was a variety of occupiers. At one point it was occupied by a government department called the ‘Office of Tents and Revels’ (whatever that was, but it sounds like fun).
The gate was always much more than just a gate. It is better described as a gatehouse. It was built like a mini-castle to hold rooms and even a hall, which was over the arch.
In the 1680s most of St John’s Gate was occupied by a printer and his wife and daughter. In 1703, the east tower became ‘Hogarth’s Coffee House’. This was run by Richard Hogarth, the father of William Hogarth, the famous artist and political cartoonist.
In 1729, Edward Cave, a writer and printer, took over the printers’ part of St John’s Gate and started publishing the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’. This was more Spectator than GQ magazine – it contained news, literature and opinion pieces, and it became very successful. It made St John’s Gate a focal point for London’s literary world of the time. Cave was friendly with Benjamin Franklin and set up one of Franklin’s lightning conductors on one of the towers.
Dr Samuel Johnson was editor of the magazine in the 1730s and 40s and had his own ‘garret’ in one of the towers, where he worked. Dr Johnson arranged for the famous actor Garrick to put on a performance of a play by Fielding in the hall over the arch of the gate – it must have had a small audience.
In the 1750s, Hogarth’s coffeehouse expanded into more of St John’s Gate and used one of the rooms as a billiard hall.
St John’s Gate was beginning to fall to bits during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The ornamental battlements were taken down – they were probably in danger of falling on passers-by – and the original large entrance structure on the south side was removed.
Public pressure grew in the 19th century to save St John’s Gat. A local architect, W P Griffith, mounted a campaign to raise funds. He didn’t raise as much as his ambitious plans required, but enough to patch up the stone facing of the north front and restore the battlements.
Ironically, St John’s Gate’s salvation wasn’t down to high-minded architects but to enterprising pub owners, Samuel Hawkins and his son-in-law Samuel Wickens, who turned the gate into an early 19th century theme park. This was a time when everything pseudo-mediaeval was in fashion, so they rented out ‘Ye Grete Halle’ for events to groups such as ‘the Friday Knights’ (perhaps the precursors of TGI Fridays) later called the Urban Club. Hawkins and Wickens created an ‘authentic’ mediaeval atmosphere with lots of velvet hangings – the sort that Errol Flynn used to swing from – and fake suits of armour all around. But they also took serious steps to prevent any further deterioration in the building’s fabric.
In 1873 St John’s Gate was purchased by Sir Edmund Lechmere who had a serious passion for restoring the building properly. At the time a new Order of St John had been set up, and he was its first Secretary General. He bought the gate to renovate it and then to sell it to the Order when its finances allowed – which happened in 1887. He first employed R Norman Shaw, a well known church architect of the day to advise and supervise works. That didn’t really work out. Then he instructed J Oldrid Scott. Scott and his son, also an architect, worked on the buildings over the next 30 years. As the Victorians were wont to do, they added their own take on what religious buildings were meant to look like in the past, with lots of oak panelling and stone tracery – but they took seriously the restoration of the stonework, and they revealed and retained all original features.
If you look at St John’s Gate from the St John’s Lane side, you’ll see a set of shields and inscriptions. One is the arms of the Duke of Clarence and Avondale (who was the Sub-Prior of the Order at the time), and the others are the Royal Arms, the arms of the Prince of Wales, and the arms of Prior Docwra.
St John’s Gate and adjoining buildings were gradually converted to serve as the headquarters of the Order of St John and of its subsidiary, the St John Ambulance Brigade. In 1935 a museum was created in the basement, which has expanded over the years to include much of the rest of the Gate and adjoining buildings.
St John’s Gate is impressive, but you may feel that the Victorians went a bit too far in their efforts to recreate an authentic historic building. A letter to a newspaper in 1893 accused Scott of vandalism and complained that when it was all finished the gate would “wear a Tower-bridgy sort of look”, which is hard to deny. The Scotts probably saved St John’s Gate, but when you look at it today, it does look a bit like a stage-set for a Robin Hood film.