The survey of Little Britain, made by John Manning for Dance as Surveyor to St Bartholomew's Hospital, shows a patchwork of sub-divided and irregularly shaped properties with alleys, courts and gardens behind the street frontage of Little Britain, Aldersgate Street and Bartholomew Close. Today nothing survives of any of the buildings shown on the survey plan though the alignment of the southwest corner and of the south side remains the same. To the south, opposite St Botolph's churchyard, are the facades of warehouses and a public house built between 1858 and 1897. These front a recent residential development that partly follows the old street pattern and thus the alleys of Little Montague Court and Cross Keys Court still exist. On the northwest corner stands St Bartholomew's nurses' hostel and the School of Nursing and Midwifery, built in the 1950s and '70s. Elsewhere the Museum of London's roundabout and 1990s office blocks bridging a new Montague Street have recently extinguished the warren of small-scale courts and alleys on a medieval street pattern that had survived both the Great Fire of 1666 and the Blitz of 1940-41.

Religious and charitable foundations such as St Bartholomew's were richly endowed with grants and bequests of land, the income providing essential revenue for good works. Indeed, it was not until as late as 1770 that the quadrangle of St Bartholomew's was cleared of the houses and shops that had been built there for letting. The Hospital's role as landlord of properties in the City and other parts of London and of farms in Essex, Middlesex and Kent is reflected in the leases, maps, schedules and inventories retained in the present-day archives. A 'Book of estimates for repairs to London Properties 1779-96' (HC12) has on the first leaf the inscription 'Mr Dance elected 17th December 1778' and some of the earlier estimates are signed by him (ff.1-18) though W. Montague (probably William Montague, one of the people in Dance's Guildhall office) soon took over the business of checking repair work to the Britannia Alehouse in Little Britain and other of the houses and shops owned by the Hospital.

By no means all the area shown on Manning's map belonged then or now to St Bartholomew's but the possibility of expanding into Little Britain, so near to the Hospital, was important and properties were acquired there from at least 1655 up until the 1960s.

LITERATURE. S. Bradley & N. Pevsner, London 1: The City of London, 1997, pp.415, 534-55.

OTHER SOURCES. Archives of St Bartholomew's Hospital.

Group

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