Title: A Very Brief History of Old St Thomas’ Hospital and the Old Operating Theatre Museum & Herb Garret
Transcript:
Welcome to the Old Operating Theatre Museum & Herb Garret. Tucked in the attic space of St Thomas’ Church, the museum celebrates the people, stories, and history of medicine from the Old St Thomas’ Hospital. The history of this hospital is a long one, so let us take you through some of the key moments from the roughly 650 years when it was located in its original site near London Bridge.
St Thomas’s Hospital has provided shelter and relief for the poor, the sick, and needy since the 12th century, when it was part of the Catholic Priory of St Mary Overie (which is now Southwark Cathedral). After the Great Fire of Southwark in 1212, the hospital relocated to the east side of what is now Borough High street where it continued its charitable mission to help those in need. Unfortunately, the establishment of Protestantism by King Henry VIII with his order to dissolve the monasteries put a stop to this mission for 12 years. The hospital had to close its doors until a dispensation by King Edward VI allowed the City of London to take charge of the hospital as a secular space in 1553.
Fast forward about one hundred years. Towards the end of the 17th century Old St Thomas’ Hospital saw the largest re-building campaign in its history. The new three-storied buildings were organised around three large interconnected courtyards, with two smaller ones connected on the far east side. As part of the central courtyard, Thomas Cartright, the architect, rebuilt the old church of St Thomas’ in a more Neoclassical style.
The governors of the hospital asked Cartright to include a garret or large attic above the church to store the hospital’s surplus. At some point after 1703, the apothecaries of St Thomas’ took over the space and used it to cure and dry medicinal herbs and store the surplus of the medicinal remedies. From that moment on, the attic was known as the herb garret. Meanwhile, the hospital’s physicians, surgeons and apothecaries attended to soldiers, sailors and other working poor, treating diseases and tending to their injuries.
In the 18th century, St Thomas’ became a teaching hospital, training new generations of medical practitioners. To accommodate this new educational function, the hospital needed new spaces. First, a new operating theatre was installed on the men’s wards in 1755. Next, an annex was built on the north side of the hospital, complete with an anatomy theatre, a dissecting room, a pathology museum and a library. Later, in 1822 the herb garret on top of the church was transformed into a new operating theatre connected to the adjacent women’s surgical ward. This is the operating theatre you can visit today, and it was active during some of the most important moments in the history of medicine, including the advent of anaesthesia in 1846 and the establishment of the nursing profession in 1860.
In 1862, the Charing Cross Railway Company built a railway line through the site and the hospital was relocated again - this time to its current site opposite the Houses of Parliament.
In the meantime, the old hospital buildings along St Thomas Street, including St Thomas’ Church were spared and reused for other purposes. The actual attic of the church was boarded up and was forgotten for a hundred years until it was rediscovered in 1956 and then transformed into a museum with its doors opening for the first time in 1962.
Today, the Old Operating Theatre Museum & Herb Garret conserves objects and spaces from the hospital’s history, and tells the stories of those who spent their professional lives working within its walls, and those who passed through as patients.
Today you can experience this original space and its fascinating medical history when you venture up the belltower and into the attic of St Thomas’ Church.
Credits:
Narrated by Paul Craddock.
Written by Monica A. Walker.
Produced and Edited by Adam Blackmore-Heal.
Video made possible by the Lottery Heritage Fund.
Read more about our museum on our website: oldoperatingtheatre.com/categ...
See the museum in person: oldoperatingtheatre.com/visit...
The Old Operating Theatre Museum & Herb Garret is governed by the Lord Brock Trust, a registered charity (Registered Charity Number 1155078 ). If you want to support us, consider making a donation: cafdonate.cafonline.org/12547...