The Great Chamber has witnessed many grand royal occasions and was the backdrop to decades of Tudor entertaining, plotting and intrigue. It is the only Tudor great chamber to survive in London, albeit in a restored form, and remains a jewel in the crown of our historic site.
The Great Chamber can be seen by booking onto one of our tours, and you can uncover more about its history through our virtual online tour. The numbered points reveal facts and information about the room and the portraits of the Restoration Governors which now hang on its walls. You can also experience our wonderful Soundscape here – which brings to life some of the Great Chamber’s stories and how people respond to them today.
The Great Chamber was originally created in the 1540s as part of a palatial mansion built from the ruins of the Carthusian monastery. It was further embellished by the Duke of Norfolk in around 1570, when a grand fireplace and a lavishly decorated ceiling were installed. The Great Chamber was designed as a grand formal room of splendour and prestige. It was where Elizabeth I met her Privy Council in 1558 in the days before her coronation, and James I created 130 Knights. After 1611, when the site became an almshouse and a school, it was used for the governors meetings.
The room was rebuilt in the 1950s following fire damage during the second world war, and was refurbished again in 2020 as part of a National Lottery Heritage Fund project. This latest project was intended to recapture the historic grandeur of the room rather than reconstructing its design specific to any one historical period.
The Great Chamber has played a fascinating role in many of the significant moments in London’s history. We can glimpse into it’s past through depictions of the room dating from the early 19th century onwards.
This print shows the Charterhouse’s Long Gallery, a Tudor room destroyed by a fire in 1941 that also gutted the Great Chamber. The Long Gallery formed part of the Master’s private apartment, and was where the governors’ portraits which can be seen today in the Great Chamber were hung.
This shows the Great Chamber after it was remodelled by the architect Edward Blore around 1840. Blore inserted the large west window and added a decorative cornice around the ceiling.
A watercolour by Frederick Smallfield shows the Great Chamber at a time when the room was little used. The tapestry panel shown on the left of the window is hung in the anteroom today.
This photograph shows the fire damage caused by incendiary bombs during the second world war to the Great Chamber and the Old Library beneath it. You can still see a small section of the surviving original ceiling design today at the back of the room. Photo © London Metropolitan Archives
Architects Seely and Paget were appointed in the early 1950s to renovate the Great Chamber. This image shows the room prior to the 2020 refurbishment. Photo: Mark Mercer
The new design references several different architectural schemes from different centuries. The colours from the fireplace and overmantel (dating from the 16th and 17th centuries) ar carried throughout the space and a green silk moiré provides the backdrop for our important collection of Restoration portraits. The floor has been replaced with boards of varying sizes and widths, referencing its post-Reformation origins.
The portraits in the Great Chamber show some of the Charterhouse’s governors during the last half of the 17th century. These men were the political elite of their day and steeped in the turmoil of the period. The restoration of the monarchy in 1660 brought fierce debates about the rule of law, civil rights and religious toleration in England, Ireland, Scotland and settlements overseas. The men who governed the Charterhouse were players in these national debates, often as political rivals. The portraits at the far end of the room show two of the Charterhouse’s earlier owners. Alongside Queen Elizabeth I is Thomas Sutton, the wealthy financier whose will of 1611 transformed the Tudor mansion into a charitable institution.
Find out more about the Charterhouse’s Restoration governors by scrolling through the excerpts below or by downloading a copy of Dr Cathy Ross’s e-chapter from our book on the Great Chamber, available in our shop.
“They include the first Earl of Shaftesbury, scourge of Anglican bishops; Bishop Humphrey Henchman, scourge of nonconforming Protestants; Archbishop Sheldon, éminence grise of conforming Anglicans; George, second Duke of Buckingham, éminence grise of esoteric free-thinkers; a king who was secretly sympathetic to Catholics; his wayward son the Duke of Monmouth – openly stoking populist hatred against Catholics. Monmouth met his end on the scaffold, Shaftesbury died in exile: both deemed guilty of treason.” Clockwise from top left: King Charles II, the Duke of Buckingham, the Duke of Monmouth, the Earl of Craven, Archbishop Sheldon, Bishop Morley, the Earl of Shaftesbury, Bishop Henchman, the Earl of Shrewsbury. Photographs: Will Pryce.
“It is certainly possible that some pensioners admitted in the 1660s and 1670s were not as orthodox as the bishops would have liked. Looking at the nominations from the Earl of Shaftesbury, were any of the men moderate dissenters? No definite example has come to light yet, but it is possible that governors may have turned a blind eye to a nonconformist Brother in the 1670s. A Catholic Brother, however, was beyond the pale.” Anthony Ashley Cooper, first Earl of Shaftesbury, painted in 1673. Photograph: Will Pryce
“The December assembly was devoted to the hospital’s finances, its substantial property portfolio yielding an annual income of £5-6,000 by the 1670s. The June assembly was when nominations for new Brothers and Scholars were approved. Normal day-to-day business was managed by the Master, but the governors formed a court of appeal, particularly when money was involved.” Title page of the 1689 account of the Charterhouse governors defiance of James II.
“These were, of course, the royal hospital for soldiers at Chelsea conceived by Charles II in the early 1680s; and the royal hospital for seamen at Greenwich established by Queen Mary in 1694. Did the first Stuart royal hospital provide a ready-made template or an example of what not to do?” Thomas Sutton’s coat of arms, carved on the seventeenth-century organ screen in the Charterhouse chapel. Photograph: Lawrence Watson.
The refurbishment of the Great Chamber is the first since the 1950s and was conceived and carried out with the vital support of the National Lottery Heritage Fund and our generous donors.
During the second world war, the Great Chamber was gutted by an incendiary bomb. Repairs by architects John Seely and Paul Paget remodelled the room’s proportions and redecorated to suit 1950s taste. The 2020 scheme has been drawn up by conservation architect Richard Griffiths. The aim being to create an inspiring space which reflects the room’s rich history but which also meets today’s environmental standards. The wood panelling in the far alcove is new and evokes the room’s original Tudor appearance. Here, the Duke of Norfolk’s plasterwork ceiling survives with least alteration. The painted fireplace has been restored to its 17th century appearance. The walls are now lined with green moiré silk, a sympathetic setting for the recently conserved paintings. Discover the detail of the project in the films below, and you can also watch the recording of our online launch event, featuring many of the experts involved here.
The Great Chamber © 2020 by The Charterhouse, supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund is licensed under CC BY 4.0
We ran a Community Engagement programme to introduce new audiences to the Great Chamber and its stories, which resulted in a wonderful Soundscape which captures the Chamber's history and how people from different communities relate to those stories today. Find out more here continue
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