Thus, today the complex "conveys a vivid impression of the type of large rambling 16th-century mansion that once existed all round London".

[1] In 1348, Walter Manny rented 13 acres (5.3 ha) of land in Spital Croft, north of Long Lane, from the Master and Brethren of St Bartholomew's Hospital for a graveyard and plague pit for victims of the Black Death.

As they resisted Henry VIII's claim to be Head of the Church, the members of the community were treated harshly: the Prior, John Houghton was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn and ten monks were taken to the nearby Newgate Prison; nine of these men were starved to death and the tenth was executed three years later at Tower Hill.

[4] For several years after the dissolution of the priory, members of the Bassano family of instrument makers were amongst the tenants of the former monks' cells, whilst Henry VIII stored hunting equipment in the church.

In 1570, following his imprisonment in the Tower of London for scheming to marry Mary, Queen of Scots, Norfolk was placed under house arrest at the Charterhouse.

He occupied his time by embellishing the house, and built a long terrace in the garden (which survives as the "Norfolk Cloister") leading to a tennis court.

[1] In 1571, Norfolk's involvement in the Ridolfi plot was exposed after a ciphered letter from Mary was discovered under a doormat in the house; he was executed the following year.

He was appointed Master of Ordnance in Northern Parts, and acquired a fortune by the discovery of coal on two estates which he had leased near Newcastle upon Tyne, and later, upon moving to London, he carried on a commercial career.

In the Case of Sutton's Hospital,[11] his will was hotly contested but upheld in court, meaning the foundation was constituted to afford a home for eighty male pensioners ("gentlemen by descent and in poverty, soldiers that have borne arms by sea or land, merchants decayed by piracy or shipwreck, or servants in household to the King or Queens Majesty"), and to educate forty boys.

[10] Charterhouse early established a reputation for excellence in hospital care and treatment, thanks in part to Henry Levett, M.D., an Oxford graduate who joined the school as physician in 1712.

These were restored between 1950 and 1959 by the architectural firm of Seely & Paget, a rebuilding which allowed the exposure and embellishment of some medieval and much 16th- and 17th-century fabric that had previously been concealed or obscured.