The Master's House

 On the other side of the road from the main building of the Charterhouse stands the Master's House.

A visitor might see it as rather odd.  The architecture is different from that of the building it faces; it looks to be in an older style.  But it doesn't look old.  Yet the blue plaque tells you that Andrew Marvell lived part of his childhood here.  So when was it built?

The first map which shows the buildings of the hospital and Priory was drawn by Hollar in 1640.  These are the original 14th century structures.  The Priory in the bottom corner has been converted into a private house for the Alured family.  The hospital, or almshouse, buildings at the top did have had a house set aside for the Master; it is referred to in 1556 when Simon Kemsey handed over the Mastership to Laurence Allen.  But it is clearly not the house we have now.  And it was in that house which Andrew Marvell would have lived from 1624 when his father came here as Master.  Two years after Hollar drew the map all the buildings pictured were demolished to make way for a gun battery in preparation for the Civil War.  Rebuilding started in 1649 and a second phase in 1673 added a chapel.  It is most likely that the Master's House we know today dates from that period.  The style fits.

There is a sketch which appears in John Cook's history of the Charterhouse from 1882 which confuses matters.

It is titled The South Prospect, and was drawn in 1724; but where was the artist standing?  South of the whole site meant he (or she) was looking at the rear of the Master's house, but that doesn't look right.  So was this the view of the hospital building done with the artist's back to the Master's house?  That seems most likely.

An aerial view of the House gives an idea of its size.

This is not two separate buildings, one behind the other.  They are part of the same structure, with the rear part forming an extensive west wing.  This probably contained the servants' quarters and some utilities.  The garden is huge by any standards.  Clearly one of the perks of being Master, and the reason for the job being so sought after, was to have such a grand residence.  If he had more than one source of income, a large family and servants, it was ideal.  For a single man dependent on his salary as Master, it was far too big.  

Originally there was a coach house and stables, perhaps where the garage is now.  A great deal of information about the house comes from a 1768 inventory drawn up by a Notary Public when the house was temporarily empty.  I looked at this "Inventory of Areloms" in detail in an earlier post.   It tells us that there was a well-equipped brew-house, almost certainly in the west wing.  There is also mention of a chapel within the house as well as a cellar.

The house was not touched when the hospital itself was demolished and rebuilt in 1780.  Over the years a great deal of money had to be spent to maintain it, but it survived - until May 1941, when a bomb caused considerable damage.  (The Master, Arthur Chignell was in his shelter in the garden at the time and was unscathed.)  The process of evacuating the Charterhouse began.  Chignell tried a for a little while to live in the undamaged part of the house, but eventually had to move out, and all the buildings were left unprotected.  Rapid deterioration was inevitable.  By the end of the war the house was a ruin.

While the Charterhouse was rapidly restored and re-opened in 1948, the house became the subject of heated debate.  There were those who felt that the only sensible thing to do was to demolish it completely and build a modern house in its place.  Others wanted to replace it with more accommodation for residents, with the Master going to live elsewhere.  Many wanted it to be restored to its former glory.

The arguments came up against a new factor.  So many ancient buildings had been damaged during the war that there were moves to give them legal protection.  This culminated in the Town and Country Planning Act of 1947 which introduced the listing system.  The Charterhouse itself was quickly listed; but what about the Master's House?  The debate was only settled when it became clear that the only funds available would be via the War Damage Commission, established in 1941, and that would be for restoration to its original condition.  The work to do so only got under way in the mid-1950s.

Plans for its reconstruction were drawn up.  Here is the north elevation.  A decision was made to convert the west wing into accommodation for residents.  The result of this was not successful.

The reconstruction work used as much material from the old building as could be salvaged.  But the result was, inevitably, that it looked rather too new.  

When a major renovation and rebuilding project was under-taken on the Charterhouse in 1978 an attempt was made at a better conversion of the west wing of the house.  The interior was shaped into four flats; but one of them had no kitchen, and, until the 1990s, there was only a curtain between the upstairs flats and the Master's domain.  The wing was given a new name - Chignell House, in honour of the Master between 1919 and 1951.

In 2017, during an interval between Masters, more extensive work was needed on the house, to deal with damp and to remove partition walls which had not been part of the original.  The result is a spacious house fit for a modern Master of the Charterhouse.