Charterhouse Square

    

Joseph Rotblat Building                                                             John Vane Science Centre

Charterhouse Square

In 1933-1934 the Medical College of St Bartholomew's Hospital Trust purchased the site of the former Merchant Taylors' School in Charterhouse Square beside the remains of the medieval Carthusian Monastery. This land was used to re-house the pre-clinical departments, previously in cramped quarters on St Bartholomew’s land.

During the Second World War, the Charterhouse site suffered badly. Most buildings were damaged or destroyed, as well as buildings in Long Row on the Smithfield Site. When the war started, pre-clinical students were evacuated to Queen’s College in Cambridge, while clinical teaching was split between St Bartholomew’s Hospital, Hill End Hospital and St Alban’s and Friern Hospital. The pre-clinical school returned to London in 1946, but the rebuilding of the Charterhouse site was not completed until 1963.

In 1999, Charterhouse was leased to the college after the merger with the School of Medicine and Dentistry. At that time large parts of the site were still as they'd been left by World War II bomb damage. The College's lease requires the land and buildings to be used only for the School of Medicine and Dentistry. At this time, there was some uncertainty around the future of St Bartholomew’s Hospital. However, the hospital was allowed to remain under the decision that the hospital should focus on cancer and cardiac disease.

This allowed the College to invest in the site as the home of the Barts Cancer Institute the William Harvey Research Institute and the Wolfson Institute of Preventative Medicine.

 

Sources Used:

_{Valentine, R 2012, The Making of Queen Mary, University of London, Queen Mary University of London, London}