St John's Gate

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  • Address
    St John's Lane, Clerkenwell, EC1
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  • Transport
    underground rail: Farringdon

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Lonely Planet review

What looks like a toy-town medieval gate cutting across St John's Lane turns out to be the real thing. It dates from the early 16th century but was heavily restored 300 years later. During the Crusades, the Knights of St John of Jerusalem were soldiers who took on a nursing role. In Clerkenwell they established a priory that originally covered around four hectares.

The gate was built in 1504 as a grand entrance to their church, St John's Clerkenwell in St John's Sq. Although most of the buildings were destroyed when Henry VIII dissolved every priory in the country between 1536 and 1540, the gate lived on. It had a varied afterlife, not least as a Latin-speaking coffee house run, without much success, by William Hogarth's father during Queen Anne's reign. The restoration dates from the period when it housed the Old Jerusalem Tavern in the 19th century. A pub of (almost) that name can now be found round the corner on Britton St .

Inside St John's Gate is the small Order of St John Museum (tel: 7324 40005; www.sja.org.uk/museum; admission free; - Mon-Fri, to Sat) which recounts in three galleries the history of the knights and their properties around the world and of their successors, the modern British Order of St John and the St John Ambulance brigade. It also offers a potted history of Clerkenwell in photographs and documents.

Definitely try to time your visit for one of the guided tours (adult/senior £5 / £4 ; tours & Tue, Fri & Sat) of the gate and the restored church remains. This includes the fine Norman crypt with a sturdy alabaster monument commemorating a Castilian knight (1575), a battered monument portraying the last prior, William Weston, as a skeleton in a shroud, and stained-glass windows showing the main figures in the story. You'll also be shown the sumptuous Chapter Hall where the Chapter General of the Order meets every three months.