The Charterhouse

The Charterhouse was founded as a Carthusian monastery in 1371 and flourished until the Reformation. In 1545 it was converted into a Tudor mansion by Sir Edward North. Thomas Howard, the 4th Duke of Norfolk, later rebuilt part of it, and was responsible for the Norfolk Cloister. In 1611 the site was purchased by Thomas Sutton and became 'Sutton's Hospital' caring for eighty male pensioners ("gentlemen by descent and in poverty, soldiers that have borne arms by sea or land, merchants decayed by piracy or shipwreck, or servants in household to the King or Queens Majesty"), and educating forty boys. The building remained a school until 1872, when the Charterhouse School moved to Surrey; it still functions however as an almshouse and has to date been largely inaccessible to the public. The buildings were badly bomb-damaged in 1941. The Master's Court was burnt out, the Great Staircase was destroyed, and the Great Hall and Great Chamber damaged.

The Sir Henry Havelock Memorial is within the Italianate 17th century chapel cloister. The memorial, erected in 1894, commemorates the British general Sir Henry Havelock (d. 1857) and other alumni of Charterhouse School who died in the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny and other campaigns. The memorial is constructed of different coloured marbles, with a grid of individual compartments enclosed in an architectural frame.