In a quiet corner of Clerkenwell, a few minutes’ walk from the bustle of the City of London, a medieval stone gatehouse stands as one of the last visible remains of a crusading order that has cared for the sick and the traveller for more than nine hundred years. St John’s Gate is home to the Museum of the Order of St John, which tells the story of the Knights Hospitaller — and of the familiar St John Ambulance that grew from them.
From Jerusalem to the Holy Land
The Order of St John began in Jerusalem towards the end of the eleventh century, when a community of brothers established a hospital to care for sick and poor pilgrims arriving in the Holy Land, tending all who came regardless of faith or means. Their hospice stood beside a church dedicated to St John the Baptist, and it is from him that the Order took its name. After the First Crusade the brothers took on a military role alongside their hospitaller work, becoming known as the Knights of the Order of St John of Jerusalem. In the centuries that followed they would make their home in turn on Cyprus, Rhodes and finally Malta.
A shared crusading age
The Hospitallers were one of the great military-religious orders of the crusading era; the other, of course, was the Knights Templar. The two were distinct bodies, but their histories are closely entwined. When the Templar order was suppressed in 1312, much of its property across Europe, England included, was granted to the Hospitallers. In both orders we may recognise the same ideal our own Order seeks to honour: Christian devotion expressed through service and chivalry.
The English headquarters at Clerkenwell
The Order’s English headquarters, the Priory of Clerkenwell, was established in the 1140s and grew into one of the wealthiest religious houses in London. St John’s Gate itself was built in 1504 by Prior Thomas Docwra as the southern entrance to the priory’s inner precinct. That long history was interrupted by Henry VIII, who dissolved the Order in England alongside the monasteries and seized its lands. The priory was gradually dismantled over the following centuries, but the Gate endured.
Revival and a living legacy
In the 1870s the Gate was acquired by a revived Order of St John and became the headquarters of both the Order and its new St John Ambulance Brigade. Today the Order’s full title is The Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem, and it carries its founding mission into the present through two great charitable works: St John Ambulance, whose volunteers are a familiar sight at public events across the country, and the St John Eye Hospital in Jerusalem, which still treats patients of every background, just as the very first hospital did.
Visiting the museum
The museum cares for a collection of some sixty thousand objects, among them illuminated manuscripts, arms and armour, ceremonial regalia, paintings and early medical instruments. The ground-floor galleries and shop are free to enter, with donations welcomed. The Priory Church and crypt, and the historic rooms above the gateway — including the Tudor-style Council Chamber over the arch — can be seen on guided tours, for which booking is recommended. The Gate stands on St John’s Lane, Clerkenwell (EC1M 4DA), a short walk from Farringdon station. The galleries are presently open from Wednesday to Saturday, but opening times and tour details are best confirmed in advance on the museum’s own website at museumstjohn.org.uk.
For anyone drawn to the history our Order keeps alive, St John’s Gate is a rare and moving place: a corner of medieval Christian chivalry preserved in the heart of modern London, and well worth a visit.