‘..Guy’s Hospital, founded by Thomas Guy, a benevolent bookseller in Lombard Street, who, by various successes in trade and speculation succeeded at last in amassing a considerably fortune..’. The hospital was built in 1721, behind St Thomas’ Hospital, and was for the care of incurable patients from St Thomas’s Hospital. The original buildings (dark grey) are at top left of the plan below.
The courtyard inside the main gateway is filled with cars and I couldn’t achieve a convincing photograph. Sir Thomas Guy stands benignly in the middle, and is buried in the Chapel on the west of the square, a beautiful tomb which I felt unable to picture.
Passing through the central gateways leads to The Colonnades and the two small courtyards. Keats, who trained at the Hospital in 1815-16, sits in a stone arbour in the East Courtyard, while a statue of Viscount Nuffield, a benefactor of the Hospital, is in the West Courtyard.
Behind the entrance courtyard is a quiet area, the Sanctuary, which remembers the ninety four people from the Hospital who were killed in WWII
Guy’s Hospital continues to grow, with the largest Dental School in Europe and a new Cancer Care block currently under construction.
Thomas Guy was an extraordinary philanthropist. As well as building and endowing the hospital he built almshouses in Tamworth, the town in which he lived as a boy, and he supported many layers of relatives. (The almshouses were rebuilt in 1913.)
You may be interested in
A history of the Hospital
Southwark and the Hospitals
Thomas Guy and the Tamworth Almshouses (perhaps not entirely accurate in all details)
Tamworth and its history
Candy Blackham
Thank you!
Bob Jones - The Lost City of London
The alcove in which the statue of Keats sits (the “Lunatick Chair”) used to be part of Old London Bridge, and was salvaged when the bridge was demolished in the 1830s