See paintings by William Hogarth and climb the scaffolding to admire the Great Hall's stucco ceiling.
The 18th century North Wing of St Bartholomew's Hospital is undergoing much needed conservation and restoration work, both to its interior and exterior. Works inside the building include cleaning, conserving and repairing the stucco ceiling and walls of its Great Hall and the paintings by William Hogarth adorning its staircase.
Walks available for booking
For a schedule of forthcoming London On The Ground guided walks, please click here.
During the restoration project, Barts Heritage is running special tours allowing visitors to see the conservators in action. Visitors can climb the scaffolding to see the ceiling and the conservation work at close quarters.
Barts Heritage is a charitable organisation which has responsibility for the Grade I-listed North Wing and is separate from Barts Health (the NHS trust that runs the hospital). The Chief Executive of Barts Heritage is Will Palin, a leading figure in historic building conservation, who was previously responsible for the restoration of the Painted Hall at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich. He also happens to be the son of Michael Palin, of Monty Python and travel documentary fame.
St Barholomew's Hospital was founded in 1123 and is the oldest hospital in the country still operating on its original site. In the 18th century its governors embarked on an ambitious modernisation programme to replace its run-down medieval buildings with new facilities centred on an elegant new square.
The designer for the redevelopment, James Gibbs, was one of the most eminent architects of the early 18th century. Born in Aberdeen, he trained in Rome and worked primarily in England.
He is also known for two London churches, St Martin-in-the-Fields and St Mary-le-Strand. Elsewhere, he designed Oxford University's Radcliffe Camera and Cambridge University's Senate House (and the Gibbs Building at King's College Cambridge).
Gibbs gave his services to St Bartholomew's for free, but was rewarded with becoming a governor of the Hospital.
The North Wing, completed in 1732, was the first side of the square to be built. It was not designed for patients, but to be the administrative and financial hub of the hospital.
Almost all of the North Wing's first floor is dedicated to a single room, known as the Great Hall. This was intended to impress potential donors to the hospital, whose redevelopment was entirely funded by gifts from wealthy City of London merchants and others.
The staircase leading up to the Great Hall has two enormous pictures painted by William Hogarth: The Good Samaritan and The Pool of Bethesda. Hogarth, one of the leading English artists of his generation, was born in 1697 just around the corner in St Bartholomew Close.
He offered his services to the hospital for free, after hearing that its governors planned to commission an Italian artist, Jacopo Amigoni. Before these two canvases, which were Hogarth's first history paintings, he was better known for his engravings.
Both paintings illustrate stories from the Bible that depict healing and diseases, appropriate themes for a hospital.
One of the key challenges for the conservators is to clear the Hogarth paintings of several layers of varnish, which partly obscure the original colours and create unwanted reflections on the surfaces. During my recent visit the work had not yet started and both works were fully visible.
Would-be benefactors were enticed to donate to the hospital with a promise of immortalisation by having their names painted onto wooden boards fixed to the walls of the Great Hall.
Donors' names are displayed in the Great Hall dating from the 16th century, well before the construction of the North Wing, to the early 20th century when the practice discontinued.
However, the current restoration and conservation programme has led to a fresh wave of donations and space has been found to display the names of the latest benefactors (who include a certain Michael Palin).
The Great Hall also features paintings of St Bartholomew and two Kings, Henry VIII and Edward VII. My photographs of these paintings were taken before they were covered for the restoration project.
The Hall's portrait of the hospital's patron saint is relatively unusual in that it does not follow the conventional iconography of St Bartholomew. He is typically portrayed holding the knife with which he is said to have been flayed (skinned alive), while draping his skin across his forearm like a cloak. The painting in the Great Hall shows him dressed and still in his skin, although he is holding the flaying knife.
The hospital has strong Royal connections going back to Henry VIII in the 16th century.
Henry VIII re-founded the hospital after he had closed the associated Priory of St Bartholomew in the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The priory's demise had cut off the hospital's main source of income, leading the Lord Mayor of the City of London to petition the king to save it. He re-established the hospital in 1546, giving it a new charter.
In addition to the painting of Henry VIII, the Great Hall has a stained glass window depicting the king presenting the royal charter to the Lord Mayor, surrounded by aldermen and nobles. The window pre-dates the current building, with the oldest pieces of glass (the head and shoulders of the Mayor) thought to date from the 1620s/30s. Glaziers' signatures in the glass show dates ranging from 1652 to 1881.
The window, known as the Charter Window, has been removed for conservation and restoration work, but I had a chance to see it last autumn before it was taken away.
Under the royal charter the hospital's full name was “The House of the Poor in West Smithfield in the Suburbs of the City of London of King Henry the Eighth’s Foundation.” Most people call it Barts.
King Edward VII, when still the Prince of Wales, was the first royal to visit Barts in 1868, a year after becoming its first royal president.
Queen Victoria visited Barts in 1869, the year after her son's first visit. She is remembered in the Great Hall in the form of a stone bust.
Royal connections continue today. King Charles III has been patron of Barts Heritage since 2021, before he became king. He visited the Great Hall in 2023 to celebrate the hospital's 900th anniversary.
A second stone bust in the Hall commemorates Sir Sydney Waterlow, a 19th century businessman, politician, philanthropist and former Lord Mayor of London. In 1872 he leased Lauderdale House in Highgate to the hospital rent-free for use as a convalescent home.
Today the Great Hall's uses include holding examinations and graduation ceremonies for the medical school and hosting a range of functions for which only a splendid 18th century room will do.
For the time being, of course, the restoration project has temporarily halted the use of the Great Hall for those purposes. However, while the conservation is ongoing, the special tours offer a rare opportunity to see details of the building's interior close up.
When I visited recently, there were three conservators working from the platform at the top of the scaffolding on the magnificent 18th century plaster stucco ceiling designed by Jean Baptiste St Michell.
The ceiling can now be viewed up close from the top of the scaffolding, as St Michell must have seen it while creating it nearly three centuries ago.
However, he might have been surprised by the gilding, which is thought to have been added later, and concerned by the peeling paintwork in many places.
Climbing the scaffolding is a unique experience, combining unprecedented views of the architectural and decorative detail of the Great Hall with an appreciation of the scale of the conservators' task.
After the conservation is complete next year, the scaffolding will come down and it will no longer be possible to see the Great Hall's ceiling at close quarters.
However, the art and architecture of this historic part of St Bartholomew's Hospital - refreshed and restored - will be made more widely available for year-round public use.
The hour-long tours, called 'Anatomy of the North Wing', are currently available until late January 2025. They can be booked via Barts Heritage's Evenbrite account at this link.
You may also be interested to read my post from last year celebrating the 900th anniversary of Bart's Hopsital and the nearby Priory Church of St Bartholomew the Great.
Walks available for booking
For a schedule of forthcoming London On The Ground guided walks, please click here.
St Bartholomew's Hospital is on the route of my walking tour Monasteries, Martyrs, Murder and Meat (next available date 28 September 2024).
After reading this excellent post we did the Eventbrite tour you recommended. It was fascinating. Thank you.
What a great opportunity to see conservationists at work! I hope to get up there before the scaffolding is removed.