The benefactor - William Thomas Dibb

Photo by Ann Godden

There is a memorial in our chapel to William Thomas Dibb, and a brass plaque below it commemorating his son, Oscar Knocker Dibb.  They are the only people to receive that honour other than Masters and their families (and Matron Jane Burn).  Dibb was a major benefactor of the Charterhouse.
W T Dibb was born in Hull In December 1822.  His father was Emanuel Dibb, a brewer who, in the 1826 Directory, had premises in Mill St, Hull.  In 1828 Emanuel inherited property from his father-in-law and evidently became a prosperous man.  However, he died in 1839 when his son William was only 17.  Four years later William's mother Margaret also died, leaving the young man with a thriving business to run.
William married Mary Ann Riplin in August 1844, but she died three years later.  He swiftly remarried, this time to Caroline Sarah Knocker, the daughter of William Knocker, a distinguished naval Lieutenant.  In 1846 Dibb had gone into partnership with another brewer, Robert Ward Gleadow, to form Gleadow, Dibb and Co, and the company built a new brewery on Silvester St.  (In 1887, after William's death, the company became Hull Brewery.)  By 1851 William and Caroline were living in Spring St, Hull, and the census records that William was a brewer employing 10 men.  The business grew.  By the time of the 1881 census he was employing 40 men and living at 6, Claremont Terrace, Beverley Rd (now part of Beverley Rd itself).

Claremont Terrace, picture supplied by Bill Longbone

It was in March of that that year that the Master of the Charterhouse, Henry Kemp, produced plans for an additional 14 rooms to be paid for by an anonymous donor.  In April there was a Charity Commission enquiry into the condition and management of the hospital.  Kemp gave evidence about the donor, naming him as William Dibb but asking that his anonymity be respected.  The press obliged.  His name did not come out until the rooms were built.

However, by October 1882 the new buildings were no further forward; the Charity Commissioners had only just got round to sending out the correct forms. The scheme that was submitted involved building 11 new rooms in the Master's garden; turning the widows' house into a sickroom and mortuary; setting new pay levels for staff; and increasing the allowance for attending to sick inmates. There would be 44 brethren, 44 sisters and 6 widows in the House in total. Three years went by with no word from the Charity Commission.

It was 1885 before the new rooms were approved, sited differently from the original plans (i.e. not in the Master's garden), and building begun.  William Dibb, meanwhile, had spent a year as Sheriff of Hull in 1883.  As the new rooms took shape he asked that they "should be built in as substantial and convenient a form as possible and every consideration and regard for the comfort of the inmates".  The cost was never disclosed.

In August 1886 Dibb said that he was willing to pay for another block of rooms.  But that was not to be.  He died on 28 December 1886 while on a train journey from Bridlington to Hull.  It was thought that he suffered a heart attack, having had to rush to catch the train.  He was buried in the Hull General Cemetery.  The photo comes from a memorial book written about him in 1888.  Sadly, this is one of the gravestones removed and trashed by the Hull City Council in the 1970s.

The Charterhouse put up a bust of Dibb outside the main building, but it deteriorated rapidly, and so was replaced by the memorial in the chapel, which was unveiled on 18 April 1888.  It is was designed and made by Messrs W D Keyworth and Son.

William's son, the splendidly named Oscar Knocker Dibb, was also a generous donor to the Charterhouse.  Born in 1866, he became a lawyer, practising in Hull before moving to Surrey.  He died in 1916 leaving £1,000 in his will to the hospital (worth nearly £60,000 in today's values).  

We have reason to be grateful to the Master Brewer and his family.

William Thomas Dibb

Living in the Charterhouse

For 576 years Charterhouse residents (until recently they were called "inmates") lived in single rooms with absolutely no mod cons.  Rooms in the original building were probably little more than cubicles for sleeping in, with a communal living space.  We know that there were separate wings for men and women, with each wing having a brick-floored kitchen.  The buildings which replaced the demolished original hospital may have provided more space, but we have no description of them.  It is the 1780 rebuilding which gives us a clear picture of what life was like for residents.
I write this sitting in my living room in a flat which was part of the wing added in 1804.  This room was for 156 years the entire living space for generations of residents.  I have two additional rooms plus a bathroom and a kitchen; the whole flat comprises what were previously rooms for four inmates.  The same is true of flats in what we now call Old House, the 1780 building.  We can get a good idea of life in these rooms from the Geoffrye Museum in London.

Their almshouse was also built in 1780, and the museum has reconstructed the interiors of some rooms to show what they were originally like.
The focus is, of course, the fireplace.  This provided more than heating; it was a resident's only means of cooking.  Coal was provided along with the weekly subsistence allowance or "maintenance", as well as turves for keeping it going but damped down.  Water had to be heated over this fire.  There is room for only a single bed.  How couples coped when men were finally allowed to bring their wives into the Charterhouse is not clear.  There is a table, two chairs and some pewter tableware.  Our rooms also had a cupboard or shelves, and perhaps a rail for clothes.
The receptacle under the bed was essential.  The privies could be a long distance from the room, and were unpleasant earth closets.  Water closets were introduced in 1849 in a block next to the main building, to contain six water closets and a bath, “according to the latest improvements”. £49 was spent on the plumbing work, and a further £20 on painting all the buildings on the site. The water closets were unfamiliar to some of the inmates, and in November a notice was printed “ordering that any inmate found guilty of damaging or stopping up the water closets by pouring any substance in any way injurious will at once be suspended and their pay withheld.”  
When buildings were added in the mid-19th century, their facilities replicated the existing ones.  But drainage was always a problem at the Charterhouse, and by the beginning of the 20th century it was becoming a major concern.  In 1902 John Watson, the Surveyor, had made an inspection and reported: “In the Bromby Wing the WCs for the use of the inmates are placed under the staircase, without either light or ventilation, and are most unsanitary; and with respect to the Dikes Wing, the inmates have to cross the open yard to some very old and unsatisfactory privies, and I suggest that when the finances of the charity justify an alteration that it would be a great convenience if porches were built with w.c. and slop sink over the same on the first floor, similar to those in the Dibb Wing.” He had prepared plans, with costings of £50 each block. The matter was referred to a sub-committee, which reported back with a plan to get rid of all the old w.c.s and privies and put in new lavatories.  These meant the upgrading of the drainage system, and Watson wanted new drains in the northern part of the yard. The problem was not solved. In February 1906, the Master reported that there was a “stench” arising from the drain in Bourne Wing, and they needed to replace an old brick drain with stoneware pipes. In December of the same year, “The Master reported that during the past summer diarrhoea had been more prevalent than usual amongst the inmates, and especially in the rooms adjoining the sewer referred to in his report of 2^nd April last [relating to Bourne Wing] and that cases were still occurring.” There had been a death. A sanitary inspector had said that the sewer and the open privies in Bourne Wing were not sanitary, and the doctor, who agreed, had said that the privies ought to be emptied more than once a week, especially in hot weather.
Modernisation of any kind was a long, slow process.  The trustees were always extremely reluctant to spend money on facilities for the residents.  They had no option following the damage caused by the blitz and the long closure after the war, but even then the improvements were minimal.  A few of the rooms were merged into double rooms. The surveyor wanted electric plugs fitted, but this request was ignored.  The Master managed to get wash hand basins installed in the bathroom.  Rooms were now lit by electricity but the residents had no control over it, and the lights were turned off at 10.00 pm.  Naturally some residents defied this imposed curfew by turning to candles, even though this was forbidden.
At this point, expectations of what charities like the Charterhouse should provide were changing.  With the arrival of the welfare state residents no longer received a weekly subsistence allowance; they had to pay "maintenance" or rent for their accommodation.  Yet living conditions deteriorated.  In October 1954 the Master, Ronald Helm, wrote a furious letter to the trustees.  He gives a picture of how rudimentary the facilities still were. The only way in which residents could get water to take to their own rooms was to “bend low over a bath” to fill containers, “a difficult and tiring physical task”. He wanted each bathroom to be fitted with a sink unit with draining board “without further delay”. The hot water in the bathrooms came from immersion heaters and was unsuitable for drinking, so he wanted electric water heaters in the bathrooms above the sink units, “such as has been installed in the Matron's kitchen”. Just as infuriating to him was the fact that the only form of heating the residents had was their coal fires, which had to be lit before they could even boil a kettle, and had to be kept alight even in high summer to enable them to cook a meal. Not only did this cost a great deal of money in fuel, but it was a huge inconvenience to the residents and “a cause of much discontent”. He urged the Trustees to dispense with the coal-burning grates and install electric fires. At the same time they should provide each living room with “a plug-point and a small double-ring electric cooker, together also with an electric kettle”. Helm stressed that he had brought these matters to the Trustees' attention many times before, and now wanted them to get on with it. He made sure that the letter was sent to each of the Trustees.
Despite the support of the Surveyor, there was more delay, and in 1959 Helm wrote a brutal report condemning conditions. A year later he resigned and went back to parish ministry. In the same year a contract was signed with Geo. Houlton & Sons Ltd to "to improve and modernise the arrangement of the living quarters and provide necessary food storage, washing and lavatory accommodation together with the stripping out and replacement of all internal out-of-date finishings, fixed light windows, kitchen ranges and decayed timbers etc.” Most of the accommodation became double rooms (which, of course, reduced the numbers which could be housed). Electric plugs were put in the rooms, with pre-payment meters, and Baby Belling cookers were provided. However, there were still fireplaces but no washing or toilet facilities in residents' rooms, and no real kitchens. There were no wash basins in the bathrooms. Over the next decade many residents paid to replace their open fireplaces with electric fires. And then a hike in the "maintenance" or rent angered many of the residents.
In the mid 1970s a "new house" was built (records have been lost from that time so details of cost etc are missing). It consists of two self-contained flats, one above the other, in a building on a piece of spare land on the western edge of the property beside the hall. A much bigger redevelopment soon followed. There were large grants available to Housing Associations, so the Charterhouse became an HA. Plans were drawn up to replace the Victorian buildings with flats. The 1780 building (Old House) was listed so had to be kept. The 1804 Bourne House should have been demolished but Council planners decided to give it a local listing. The rooms in these two buildings were converted into one- or two-bedroomed flats with bathrooms and kitchens, and gas central heating.

The rest of the site was reduced to rubble. All the residents, of course, had to find accommodation elsewhere while the work to build two-storey blocks of modern flats went on. Opportunities to include features such as stair-lifts and ramps were not taken, and the lack of adaptations for those with mobility problems remains a drawback.

The Priory that gave us our name

On 18 February 1378 Michael de la Pole put his name to a document setting out his establishment of a Carthusian priory outside the walls of Kingston upon Hull.  He was following, he said, the intentions of his late father William, who had wanted to build " a certain Religious House of Nuns, or Poor Sisters Minoresses Regular, of the Order of St. Clare" instead of the hospital for the poor he had originally planned. Michael preferred a priory for males of the Carthusian order because "their Rules will be kept more safely, and with more Vigilance and Devotion, than by Women". Walter de Kele was to be the first Prior. Michael lists the lands with which he is endowing the Priory.
As with the 1384 document founding the Maison Dieu, there is confusion about whether the hospital, or Maison Dieu, already existed, but we will skip that argument here.
Two religious houses already existed in Hull. The White Friars, or Carmelites, were established here in around 1290, and the Black Friars, or Austin Friars, in 1317. Both friaries are still remembered in Hull street names. The Carthusians were a very different order. They were founded 1084 by Bishop Bruno of Grenoble in the Chartreuse mountains and, to quote from the English Heritage website,       "The purpose of Carthusian life was total withdrawal from the world to serve God by personal devotion and privation. While other monks lived communally, Carthusians rarely met one another, passing the long day in the isolation of their cells and The monks’ lives were ordered by a strict timetable. They followed the same daily round of eight offices (or prayers) as monks of other religious orders. But uniquely, they only celebrated the night offices and the afternoon office of Vespers together regularly in the church, and Mass less frequently. Otherwise they said their offices and celebrated Mass alone in their cells. Only on Sundays and feast days was the monastic day different. On these days, the monks dined together, met to discuss business and discipline, and celebrated all offices in the church."
It was an unusual choice by Michael; there were only ever 10 Carthusian houses in England.  There is no contemporary description of the priory.  The earliest picture of it comes from the Cotton MSS and is dated to around 1538.

The orientation of it is thought to be skewed.
A century later the Hollar plan gives us more detail but the central tower has gone.

(This comes from a conservation document produced by the Hull City Council.  This document also reproduces a drawing purporting to be the ruined gateway to the priory done by Thomas Tindall Wildridge and published in Cook's 1882 history of the Charterhouse, but we now know that it is a fake, a copy of a much earlier etching of Coverham Abbey gateway.)
We can be confident about where the priory was; it was situated just to the west of our current buildings.  Some physical evidence of that was uncovered in 1805 by those digging the foundations of a housing development on the site.  They found skeletons but no coffins.  Carthusians bury their dead wrapped in simple shrouds and without coffins.  But no archaeology has ever been done on the area, and post-war building work may mean that nothing remains.
At its peak the Hull Priory would have had a similar lay-out to Mount Grace Priory near Allerton.  Enough remains of that to reconstruct it.

Although Michael de la Pole stipulated in the founding document of his Maison Dieu in 1384 that the Prior was to have supervision over the Master, there was probably little interaction between the two establishments.  One of the few insights we have into the life of the Priory comes from a document in the archives of Ewelme in Oxfordshire, the home of William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk and grandson of Michael, and his wife Alice (granddaughter of Geoffrey Chaucer).  It is an indenture given by the widowed Duchess.  It tells us, incidentally, that the Duke had granted the Priory the manor of Rimswell in 1439, but the meat of it is that the instruction that a monk was to say a daily mass and prayers for the Duchess and her son john, the Duke; images of the Duchess and the late Duke to a particular design were to be set up in the refectory of the Priory; and the monks were to give bread and ale to two "almsfolk" every day, on pain of forfeiting Rimswell.  One other surprise comes from this document; it refers consistently to the priory "and convent".  This is the only indication I have seen that at some stage the priory included a section for Carthusian nuns.  Whether this involvement of the de la Poles was maintained for long after Alice's death is doubtful.
Little more is recorded of the priory's history until 1535.  Henry VIII had begun his closure of the monasteries and confiscation of their property, and was said to have a particular dislike of Carthusians.  Hull's priory had a total annual value of the house in 1535 was £231 17s. 3d., and the clear annual value only £174 18s. 3d.  It therefore came under the operation of the Act for the suppression of the lesser monasteries, but it received the king's licence to continue.  Why it was selected for exemption is not known, but the breathing space meant that it could give shelter to two refugees from the London Charterhouse.  The monks there had refused to acquiesce in Henry's Act of Supremacy and most were executed in the spring of 1535.  Two, John Rochester and James Walworth, were seized and brought to the Hull priory.  Both are listed among the 13 members of the community listed in the Suppression Papers in 1536.  However, following the uprising of the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536, the King felt the need to demonstrate his power in one of its flashpoints, York.  Rochester and Walworth were taken from Hull to York and executed on 11 May 1537.

A commemorative plaque was placed on the wall of our main building 20 years ago.  It is somewhat misleading about where the Priory actually stood.
















The King's enforcers finally came for the Priory late in 1539.  Seven members were given pensions, including the Prior Ralph Mauleverey.  At least two of these are known to have found refuge in Charterhouses in Europe.  The land owned by the Priory, including the land on which it stood, was confiscated by the Crown.  But the hospital, as a separate foundation with its own endowment, was not affected.
A year or two later John Leland in his Itinerary tells us:

If those "trowehes of Leade" did indeed contain the bones of members of the de la Pole family it is not known what happened to them.  The land was leased to Thomas Alured who had come to Hull in the 1540s as paymaster of the garrison, and stayed as a customer of the port.  Both he and his eldest son represented Hull as MPs, and later generations followed suit.  Their official address was "the Charterhouse" and it was not until the rebuilding of the hospital after the Civil War that the term began to be applied to it.

Useful sources include https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/yorks/vol3/pp190-192  and  http://www.histparl.ac.uk/volume/1604-1629/member/alured-thomas-1583-1638.  

The Mulberry Tree

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, 27 August 2019, a large limb of the black mulberry tree in the garden crashed down.  It looked like the end.  After the tree surgeon had been summoned the local media were informed.  There was a great deal of interest.  The Charterhouse tree is, after all, famous.
Legend has it that Andrew Marvell, the local MP and renowned poet, would sit beneath the tree as a boy.  The trouble with the legend, however, is that it is probably wrong.  We have no evidence for the date of the tree's planting.  Marvell came here as a child of 3, in 1624, when his father became Master, and he left aged about 12 to go off to college.  He rarely came back home.  The current Master's House did not then exist, and all the buildings of the hospital were demolished in 1642 to make way for a defensive garrison at the outset of the Civil War.  Rebuilding began in 1649, and was completed in around 1673, when William Catlyn added a chapel.  There is some evidence that the footprint of the new buildings was very different from that of the original hospital.  Was the new Master's House and garden sited to accommodate the mulberry tree?  A more plausible theory is that the tree is a contemporary of those at Wilberforce House, which was also built by William Catlyn.
We know that black mulberries were introduced into Britain in the 17th century in the hope of developing a home-grown silk industry, but the project had to be abandoned when it was realised that silkworms ate only the white variety.

Our tree survived, protected from encroaching development in its sheltered garden.  It came through the second World War, despite the unexploded bomb which was found in the garden early in the war, and despite the bomb which did explode in May 1941, badly damaging the Master's House and forcing the evacuation of the Charterhouse.  It then survived years of abandonment and neglect; the Charterhouse did not reopen until 1948, and it was the mid-1950s before the Master's House was restored.
At some point it was clear that age was taking its toll. 

Steps had been taken, somewhat crudely, to prop it up with wood and wire meshing.  Nonetheless it has continued to bear fruit, some years in great quantity.  Residents have always made pies and other desserts from the sharp, tangy berries.  2019 has been a bumper year.  And it was, perhaps, that which was the tree's downfall - literally.  The weight of the fruit, together with the very dry summer, was too much for tree to take, and a huge bough simply broke away.  The Matron, Lynne Broom, took photographs of the damage before the clear-up began.

On Wednesday 28 August a BBC reporter from the Look North programme was alerted and arrived with her camera.

 Cutting away the fallen branch.

 The reporter displays the damage and explains the history.

Edward Hudson, our contract gardener, explains what has happened to the tree.


The Master, Canon Greenwell, expresses hope that it can be saved.





The Yorkshire Post had seen our Facebook page post with the Matron's photo and, the next day, published an article (with some historical inaccuracies) headlined Legendary Yorkshire tree which survived English Civil War and the Blitz may have to be felled and using Lynne's photo.
Can the tree survive?  It's hollow, but enough live wood remains to give us hope that it can be saved.  Watch this space.

UPDATE 23 July 2020
The mulberry tree survived! 

Looking rather lop-sided, nonetheless it's in full leaf, and we may yet see some fruit.  Let's hope the weight doesn't bring it down.  Another winter may see it off, but fingers crossed.

 

UPDATE 3 JUNE 2021

The tree survived and is in leaf again this year but in obvious danger of collapse so a prop has been put in.  

 

Too late

A room in the Charterhouse was highly prized.  So why did some people turn it down?
From the second half of the 19th century those who applied for a place were put on a waiting list.  The committee of councillors who acted as advisers to the hospital, faced with a vacancy, would select a few names to be put forward to the full Council.  The Council then voted on who should be "elected".  It is apparent from the register that it helped considerably to have the right connections.  Some people got a room suspiciously quickly.  Even when the new Trustees were put in place, with a scheme of governance, the system remained the same.
The demand was huge.  The local paper first noted it in 1900 when "upwards of 100" queued to apply for a vacancy.  In 1903 the number was 114 (3 of whom were called John Brown); in 1905 the paper asked, "what of the 128" unsuccessful applicants; and in 1906 there were 142 and "several of the applicants had been on the list 20 years".  This would account for the fact that in 1890 "it was found when elected that William Jones had been some time dead".  It seems that no attempt was made to ascertain whether people who had been on the waiting list for years were still wanting a room or even still alive.  Often the candidate or candidates would be in the public gallery of the Council chamber to hear the result.  As soon as the election by the Council had taken place the Master wrote the name in the register, with the date of the meeting, and then, presumably, tried to contact anyone who had not been present.  This certainly seems to have been the case after William Hay Fea became Master in 1898.
The Charterhouse was far from being the only almshouse or hospital in the city.  A number of smaller homes existed, many of which were consolidated in 1887 into the Hull Municipal Hospitals, with its own large building.  Applicants to the Charterhouse would usually have their names down on the waiting lists of these as well.  Perhaps Smith Oldham who, in 1893, "never took possession of his room" and John Appleton who was "never admitted" in 1897 had been successful in getting a room elsewhere.  There is no doubt about Thomas Dean in 1904.  He is recorded as "elected but preferred to remain in Municipal Hospitals".  By 1907 the Master settled on a formula; "elected but refused the room" is recorded for 9 candidates, the last in 1922 when the register ends.  We don't know what happened with Mary Walters who, in 1915, was elected but "resigned" 11 days later.  Perhaps she had a better offer.
The award of a room came too late for William Finningley in 1850.  He died on the same day.  It was a double tragedy for his wife Margaret who would have occupied the room with him.  A rather more romanticised, but anonymous, instance was reported in 1886.

There is no other information about this and the writer obviously had a political point to make.
The most fascinating example of a room being awarded too late is the case of John Kirby Picard.  Born in 1766, he had all the advantages one could wish.  He inherited his father's white lead works and became very wealthy.  He modernised his father's large mansion to the east of Hull, called Summergangs House, and in the early 19th century he came to the attention of the Prince Regent by minting huge numbers of copper coin tokens at his lead works (there was a severe shortage of small change at the time).  In London Picard was drawn into the circles of gambling and dissipation and lost huge sums of money.  Eventually Summergangs House had to be sold to pay his debts (it was later demolished and replaced by Holderness House).  In 1843, still mired in debt, he was awarded a room in the Charterhouse.  Three days later, before he could take up the room, he died.

Picard would have been an extraordinary addition to the Charterhouse community.
For thousands through the years the Charterhouse was a sanctuary in old age.  For a few, the award of a room came too late.

The Chapel

Christian worship was not just integral to the life of Michael de la Pole's Maison Dieu; it was its whole point.  Like the Carthusian priory next door, it was established to provide a bank of people engaged in prayer for the souls of Michael and his family, to speed them through Purgatory.  So the chapel was the hub of the place, and the Master's main job was to say Mass and lead divine service.
So it's curious that it wasn't until 1394, ten years after the licence and charter for the Maison Dieu, that Pope Boniface IX issued a papal bull (order) to Michael de la Pole, 2nd Earl of Suffolk, giving permission for "masses and other divine offices" to be said in the two chapels erected near the hospital his father had built.  Had the hospital managed without a chapel for 10 years?  Had someone forgotten to ask permission?  Had there been a hold-up with the paperwork in Rome?  The chapels were said to be "near" the hospital, rather than part of it.  And why were there two?  It seems implausible that men and women were segregated into different buildings.
No subsequent records for centuries give us any information about the appearance or use of the chapels.  While a great deal of research has been done on medieval church life and faith, almshouses are a neglected area.  We can only follow the effects of the upheavals which Henry VIII set in train through the men who were appointed as Masters, and assume that our chapel mirrored what was going on in parish churches.  The closure of the priory in 1539 left the hospital isolated, but from the appointment of Thomas Turner as Master in 1558 with a dual role as assistant at Holy Trinity (now the Minster) a strong connection with the parish church was established which was to continue for many years.
By 1582 there were only 12 inmates in the hospital.  Financial accounts of the period tell us a little about the buildings, which included kitchens, a chicken house and a buttery, but there is no mention of a chapel.  However, in 1626, when Andrew Marvell senior had been Master for two years, the accounts show that the old building and the chapel had been repaired.  It was the last time this chapel was mentioned.  In 1642 all the buildings were demolished to make way for a garrison at the start of the Civil War.  Inmates decamped to a building on Silver Street and, it seems, used Holy Trinity for their worship.  After the war, when the first phase of rebuilding started in 1649 it seems to have been without a chapel.  Did the Charterhouse residents go to the nearest church, perhaps St Mary's, or was a worship space improvised within the building?  The second phase of rebuilding added a chapel in 1673, the work of William Catlyn.  In 1724 a crude sketch was made of this chapel and appeared in John Cook's book of 1882.

These buildings lasted just over a century.  In 1777 all of them were demolished; only the bell from the chapel was salvaged.  It was made in 1670 by William Sellers of York.  It was rehung in the cupola above the new chapel and is still rung for services.  The grand new hospital integrated the chapel into the main structure.  The Victoria County History describes it in detail:

"The chapel occupies the middle of the north side of the building and projects from its north wall. The interior retains its original oak fittings and survives almost unaltered. It is lit by a tall round-headed window in each of the east and west walls and by a central dome in the roof. There is a dentil cornice and the enriched plaster ceiling is divided into three panels by raised bands of guilloche ornament. The stone slabs paving the floor have small squares of slate at their intersections. At the east end of the chapel the altar, raised on three steps, is enclosed by original rails with heavy turned balusters. Five rows of box-pews are stepped up against the west wall and there are similar pews on the south side flanking the central entrance from the corridor. This entrance has a carved doorcase and a segmental pediment. In the middle of the north wall is an enclosed area with a panelled front, curved in the centre; spacious pews for the master and officers occupy the two sides of the area while in the middle a fine semicircular pulpit, the most striking feature of the chapel, projects from the north wall. It is surmounted by a sounding-board and supported on a bracket some distance from the ground. Access to it is from a door at the rear leading to the vestry.  The drum of the pulpit and the frieze behind it are elaborately carved with swags of drapery and other ornament."

There was also a small vault beneath the altar, in which around five Masters and their wives were buried, but the vault was sealed at some point in the 19th century (there is no record of when) and the only evidence of its presence are two small arches in the brickwork of the eastern wall, and the memorial plaques which tell us the person was "interred in the vault below".  During the 2018 restoration work some human bones were disturbed below the altar, and were re-interred with appropriate ceremony.

It is the orientation of the chapel which strikes people first, and the pulpit which faces you as you enter.  When it was built it must have seemed far too big for the 44 residents housed around it, but by the second half of the 19th century, after many more rooms had been added, it would have a been a squeeze to fit them all in.

An anonymous 19th century sketch shows the chapel looking rather drab.  A few memorials have been fixed to the walls and benches have appeared to supplement the seating.  There was no heating.  A stove was later put in, but it caused complaints about fumes.  At some point a harmonium was installed to accompany the singing.  In 1901, when the governance of the Charterhouse was handed over to trustees, permission was given to replace it with an organ, and the local firm of Forster & Andrews built a splendid one in the south-east corner.  Later, electric light was installed, and there was a failed experiment with a sound system.

The Charterhouse was closed in 1941 after blast damage caused by bombing, and it was neglected and left to fall into a dreadful state.  A photograph taken after the war shows the damage to the chapel.

It was restored, along with the rest of the buildings, and re-opened in 1948.  More than 30 years later, after a major redevelopment of the complex, the chapel underwent a complete refurbishment.  A gas-fired heating system was installed and ornate chandeliers replaced the pendant lights.  On 8 July 1981 the Archbishop of York, Stuart Blanch, led a service of re-dedication.

The decoration of the chapel has always depended largely on the tastes of the Master of the time.  Until 2017 it was maintained in the rather plain state shown in the photo above.  A new Master brought a different sensibility.  But the chapel was quickly closed when a survey discovered that the floor was in a dangerous state.  Extensive work was done to fix that and install a new heating system.  The opportunity was taken to put in an effective sound system, so that, probably for the first time, everyone could hear what was going on.  While the chapel was closed services were held in the hall.

On 12 May 2019 a service of re-hallowing was led by the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu.

Our current chapel has been in use for almost 240 years, continuing a much older tradition.

Matrons of the Charterhouse

We have come to the end of an era at the Charterhouse.  For well over 200 years we have had a Matron to look after the welfare of the residents.  After the Master, she had the most important job in the institution. She was responsible for the domestic side of Hospital life; ensuring that the place was clean and in order, and that the inmates looked after their rooms; attending to the care of the sick and infirm; and doing much of the day-to-day management. Yet the role did not exist for the first four centuries of the Charterhouse’s life. In 1776 a request by the Master John Bourne to employ a Matron was turned down by the Court of Chancery. It was part of an attempt to “use four spare rooms as sick-rooms or else increase the number of inmates” from its current, and historical, 26. A Matron was needed “to attend such Poor Persons as may be ill in the said Hospital”. The Court read the Foundation Document, found nothing about a Matron (or an apothecary who was also requested) and said no.  The ruling seems to have been ignored.

There is a single reference in a document to a matron called Mrs Williams, but the first Matron whose name is recorded, and who may have been the first to hold the position, is Jane Burn. She was born in Beverley in 1791 and was a seamstress before taking the Charterhouse job in about 1830. She appears on the five censuses from 1841 to 1881 in this role. Successive Masters who filled out the census returns were unsure about her age, underestimating it by up to ten years. As she got older she seemed to acquire more duties. In 1852 the Porter died and Jane took over both his room and his duties, as well as her own. In 1867, “in recognition of the work done by her with the new rooms”, she was given a pay rise of 4/- per week and a gratuity of one guinea. In 1871 the Advisers reviewed the role of the Master and agreed that he would appoint a matron and a nurse, but they would each have to occupy a room and count as inmates, receiving the same allowances, except that the Matron would get 12/- rather than 6/-. This suggests that they expected and wanted the 80-year-old Jane to go, especially as they stipulated that future appointments would not be for life.  But she stayed. In 1877 the Master suggested “that the meritorious services of Miss Jane Burn, the Matron of the Hospital, should be recognized by a gratuity of £10.” By 1881 she had the assistance of a cook, Fanny Adamson, but there was no hint of an official deputy or of a nurse. The Advisers made plans several times for what would happen after her. In March 1881 they decided that a surgeon would be appointed on £80 p.a.; a Matron on £40; two nurses under 45 years of age; and a porter on 10/- a week. Jane died aged 93 in 1884, and is the only person other than Masters, donors and their wives to have a memorial in the Charterhouse Chapel.

The Advisers were faced with a contradiction of their own making. If the Matron and Nurse were to count as inmates they could not be removed from their rooms to make way for their successors. If they should be made to retire they needed a pension arrangement, but this does not seem to have been considered. Jane Burn may well have been a remarkable woman, but there was as yet no way of avoiding the dilemma she posed in her later years.

Jane’s successor was Fanny Adamson, who was then aged 37. She had worked in the Charterhouse since at least 1871 as a servant and then as cook. By 1891 she had her 17-year-old niece, Susan Barber, living with her, and by 1901 Susan was officially assistant Matron. Little is recorded about Fanny. In 1892 her salary was increased from £18.4s to £21 p.a. In February 1895 she got her name in the papers when she tended to a resident who was badly burned in a horrific accident (treating her inappropriately, it seems, and was late getting her to hospital).  By 1899 Fanny received £42 p.a. with "two rooms, coals and other allowances” and her application for another pay rise was turned down. That all was not well is shown by the special clause in the 1901 scheme of governance: “The present Matron of the Hospital shall cease to hold office as from the date of this Scheme, and shall be entitled either to receive a pension out of the income of the Charity, with the approval of the Charity Commissioners, or to become a Sister of the Charterhouse, but with a stipend of 3/- a week in excess of the maximum stipend payable to the other inmates.”

It took the new Trustees a few months to get round to the problem of getting rid of Fanny, and they formed a sub-committee. That recommended that she be given a pension of 14/- per week. Her successor should get £60 a year, and a Nurse should only be appointed once the new Matron was in place. The Trustees then accepted the recommendation of the Charity Commissioners that the new Matron should be a qualified nurse. They would pay her £80 a year, and her Assistant Matron (who would no longer be a nurse) would get £40 a year. Fanny Adamson and her niece left the Charterhouse, but it became apparent that she would not go quietly.  In June 1903 “The Master reported that the late Matron, Fanny Adamson and her assistant, Susan Barber, were in the habit of visiting amongst the inmates, and that these visits had a tendency to lessen the influence of the present Matron and Nurse. He was of the opinion that it would be for the good of the institution if such visits were discontinued.” The clerk to the Trustees wrote to the two women to ask them to stay away. In 1918 Fanny asked for an increase in her pension of £36.8s, and was allowed a “war bonus” of 2/6d a week. Two years later she asked for either another increase or a room in the Charterhouse. She was given an increase to £1 per week. When Fanny died on 1st February 1922 a month’s pension which had been due was claimed by her niece, with whom she had been living.
The next Matron was Sarah Hutton. She was 33, the daughter of a Kendal builder, and had been working as a hospital nurse in Hull. Her assistant or “nurse” was Fanny Maria Mumby. Fanny had been living in the Charterhouse for at least 12 years with her widowed mother Ann. Her only occupation had been helping in her parents’ greengrocery, and at the age of 51 her qualification for the job appeared to be her familiarity with the Hospital. The two were appointed in February 1903. In September the same year Fanny resigned. The Trustees’ minutes are confusing about who followed her. It seems to have been E. J. Stephenson. But the young Martha Goundrill, appointed to replace her, resigned in April 1904. Two months later the Master reported that the Matron, Sarah Hutton, had been given 3 months notice. The reason is not given, but there appears to have been differences about the scope and hours of her work. Sarah appealed to the Trustees against her dismissal, and was allowed to resign instead. She was successful, three months later, in getting them to provide her with a reference. The Master was allowed to advertise for a new Matron and for a married couple to act as porter and nurse.

The advertisement gives us clues about the reasons for the staffing problem.  The Matron's salary was the equivalent of about £8,000 pa today, plus fuel and furnished rooms (how many rooms we are not told, but probably two).  She had to be a qualified nurse and work very long hours in "preserving order" among 130 inmates and nursing the sick.  That was no small task in the days when people were not removed to care homes when they became too ill or frail to look after themselves.  At least she didn't have to do her own housework.  That humiliating task fell to the Assistant Matron.  She and her husband would get the same pay between them as the Matron did.

The new Matron appointed was Lena Jordan, who lasted until she retired in 1910, without a pension.  She was followed by Henrietta Whiteford.  A separate post here details her life.  When Henrietta went back to army nursing in 1914 the Assistant Matron, Gertrude Glister, stepped up to become acting Matron, and when the Matron officially resigned in 1917 Gertrude's appointment became permanent.

Gertrude served as Matron right through very troubled times until 1948.  Like her predecessors she was responsible for looking after residents who, after the creation of the welfare state, would be placed in care homes.  She got a mention in the local paper in February 1939 on the funeral of a resident, Thomas Stainton Cartwright, who died just 5 months short of his 100th birthday.  Gertrude had been "like a little mother" to him.
War brought more difficulties, particularly when the bombing of Hull became intense in 1941.  The only shelter for the residents was the "long corridor" which runs the length of Old House, while the Master had his own shelter in the garden.  When a bomb badly damaged the Master's House and caused blast damage to the Charterhouse itself, it was Miss Glister who had to cope.  Evacuation of the residents began, and Gertrude refused to go until all of them were rehoused; then she moved into a flat in Spring Bank.  Throughout the remainder of the war, and until 1948, she kept in touch with the former residents.  When the buildings had been restored and were ready for re-occupation the trustees decided it was time for Gertrude to retire with a much-deserved pension.  She died in 1958 aged 86.

In the last 72 years the succession of Matrons has generally followed the same pattern.  It was no longer necessary to be a qualified nurse, since with the advent of the NHS medical help and the removal of residents to care homes was freely available.  A stint as relief Matron was followed by a full-time post as Assistant Matron and then, when the current Matron retired, moving into the senior role.  All Matrons lived in a flat on the site and undertook the necessary training (as did all the staff).  There may be some dispute in the future about who was the last Matron.  The last to be appointed as such retired in March 2020.  At that point a Warden was appointed in her place, a man, but the Assistant Matron stayed on until her own retirement 4 months later and was regarded as Matron.

Is the new era merely a change of title?  It signifies, we're told, that no medical care is available here, (although the word has other meanings), and it puts us in line with other similar institutions.  However, having a man in the role is certainly new, as is having a warden who does not live on site and works office hours (with 24-hour coverage being provided by several relief wardens).  Time will tell.