Charterhouse

You need to book nearly a year in advance to see inside this former Carthusian monastery, whose centrepiece is a Tudor hall with a restored hammer-beam roof. Its incredibly popular two-hour guided tours, held from April to August, begin at the 14th-century gatehouse on Charterhouse Sq, before going through to the Preachers’ Court (with three original monks’ cells in the western wall), the Master’s Court, the Great Hall and the Great Chamber, where Queen Elizabeth I stayed on numerous occasions. The monastery was founded in 1371 by the Carthusians, the strictest of all Roman Catholic monastic orders, who refrained from eating meat and took vows of silence, broken only for three hours on Sunday. During the Reformation the monastery was oppressed, with at least three priors hanged at Tyburn and a dozen monks sent to Newgate, where they were chained upright and died of starvation. King Henry VIII confiscated the monastery in 1537, and it was purchased in 1611 by Thomas Sutton, known at the time as the ‘richest commoner in England’. Sutton – of Sutton House fame – opened an almshouse for destitute gentlemen; some three dozen pensioners (known as ‘brothers’) live here today and lead the tours. For tickets, send a stamped self-addressed envelope, a covering letter giving the dates of three Wednesdays between April and August when you would like to visit, and a cheque made payable to ‘Charterhouse’, to Tour Bookings, Charterhouse, Charterhouse Sq, London EC1M 6AN. A slightly less ante-diluvian way to visit is simply by coming during Open House weekend.