Bloomsbury (London, England) -- Description and travel; Holborn (London, England) -- Description and travel
The sisters appear to have been nurses, for there is no mention made of
any leprous sister. The chapel of the hospital appears from King Henry
II.'s charter to have been built on the site of some older parochial
church. The Bull of Pope Alexander mentions that the hospital wall
enclosed eight acres. Within this triangular space, which is at present
roughly bounded by the High Street, Charing Cross Road, and Shaftesbury
Avenue, was one central building or mansion for the lepers, several
subordinate buildings, the chapel, and the gate-house. Whether the
number of lepers was reduced when the hospital possessions were
curtailed we are not told. After the hospital buildings fell into the
hands of Lord Dudley they underwent many changes. The principal building
he converted into a mansion for his own use; this was the manor-house.
It stood between the present Denmark Street and Lloyd's Court, and its
site is occupied by a manufactory. After two years Lord Dudley obtained
from the King license to transfer all his newly-gained estates to Sir
Wymonde Carew, but there seems reason to suppose that Lord Dudley
remained in possession of the manor-house until his attainder in the
reign of Queen Mary, because the manor then reverted to the Crown, and
was regranted. Clinch gets out of this difficulty by supposing Lord
Dudley to have parted with his estates and retained the manor, but in
the deed of license for exchange all his "mansion place and capital
house, late the house of the dissolved hospital of St. Giles in the
Fields," is especially mentioned. It is possible that Sir Wymonde leased
it again to the Dudley family.
Among the many subsequent holders of the manor we find the name of Sir
Walter Cope, who bought the Manor of Kensington in 1612, and through
whose only child, Isabel, it passed by marriage to Sir Henry Rich,
created Earl of Holland. The Manor of St. Giles was in the possession of
the Crown again in Charles II.'s reign, when Alice Leigh, created by him
Duchess of Dudley, lived in the manor-house. This Duchess made many
gifts to the church, among which was a rectory-house.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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