Annals of Christ's Hospital / by E.H. Pearce.

  • Ernest Pearce
Date:
1901
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Annals of Christ's Hospital / by E.H. Pearce. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    84/474 page 52
    It was there that the rebuilding began. In 1668 there was a resolution passed “ that all the old walls att the East End of this Hospital, where the Treasurer’s House, the Compting House, the Clerke’s House, and the other houses stood, should be taken down forthwith and the ground cleared . . . that the compting house should be on the ground floor, and the Court Roome over itt, which are to be in length 44 foote and in breadth 29 foote. The Treasurer’s house to be upon parte of the ground on which it formerly stood. . . . That all the officers houses should be built in one range togeather.” The work was begun the same summer,* and in the following January they were in a position to estimate the cost of the Counting House, Court Room, and Staircase at ^901 3^. 2d., including £20 for a “ marble mantle and marble base” for the Court Room fireplace. Whether the Court Room then took on all its present beautiful appear- ance inside I am unable to say; certainly some of it may well be due to “a gentleman who was well disposed to this House,” and who in 1727 had “communicated his intention of beautifieing the Court Roome in a manner as he thought might be agreeable to the Governors.” But there were some friends of the Foundation, and a certain Mr. Erasmus Smith was foremost among them, who felt that the Counting House, spite of all the charitable work that it conducted for the good of all parts of the country, was still not the real object for which the School existed. His generous design for the rebuilding of the Hospital was first mentioned in November 1670, and in the November following he gave £500 towards the same object; but it is not till his letter of October 1672 that we are able to see what he really meant. “The great intendment of this happy foundacon”—so he wrote to the Governors— “ was not onely the sustaining poore children with food and raiment, but more principally theire discipline and education in piety and good literature, such as their indigent condicon would not afford them at home and elsewhere. . . . These * Trollope’s date, 1680 (p. 341), is thus wrong. The Counting-House was enlarged in 1788.
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3