Charterhouse

Charterhouse (a corruption of Chartreuse), originally a Carthusian monastery in London, close to Smithfield, founded in 1371 on the site of a burying-field for those who had died of the plague. Confiscated at the dissolution of the monasteries in 1535, it became the family seat of the Dukes of Norfolk, and both Elizabeth and James I. stayed there; the latter on his first entry into London. In 1611 Thomas Sutton bought it and made it a school for boys, and an asylum for eighty poor gentlemen ("Brothers"). The school was removed to Godalming in 1872, and now ranks as one of the great public schools. The governors of the Merchant Taylors' School, a large London day school, purchased the site and transferred their school there. The buildings are mostly of the 17th and 18th centuries. The master's lodge contains valuable portraits. Addison, Steele, Wesley, Grote, and Thackeray were educated at the school, and it is familiar to readers of the latter.