| Administrative history | From its foundation, St Bartholomew's Hospital acquired land and property within the City of London and beyond ('country' properties). The hospital gained much of its income from the leasing and sale of properties over the following centuries, as well as establishing farms and other businesses to supply the Hospital.
Following the Refoundation of the Hospital under Henry VIII, the property confiscated at the dissolution of St Bartholomew's Priory was returned to the Hospital, and it continued to own and lease out property in London and beyond through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These properties were surveyed annually by a Surveyor appointed from amongst the Governors, and the rents collected by the Renter.
The Governors began to divest the Hospital of its estates through sales in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and most of the remaining 'country' properties (ie those outside London) were sold in the 1920s (see SBHB/HA/1/29 pp501-502 for lists of properties sold at that time, as well as of property retained). The Hospital's Estates Office appears to have been established in around 1905 to manage the leases and sales of the remaining estates.
The Estates Office, then based at Charterhouse Square was formally closed on 31 July 1974, when the management of the hospital passed from the Board of Governors to the City and East London Area Health Authority as part of the City and Hackney District. The management of the Hospital's Estates then passed to Messrs Debenham, Tewson and Chillocks, Bancroft House, Paternoster Square, with the agreement that if the business arrangement between the hospital and the company came to an end, all Estates records would be transferred back to St Bartholomew's Hospital. |