St John's Gate – Knights, Shakespeare & Hogarth's Father

St John's Gate in Clerkenwell, London, was rebuilt in 1504 and stands as the city's only surviving medieval public gateway. Originally established in 1148 as headquarters for the Knights Hospitaller, the site was burned in 1381 during the Peasants' Revolt. In 1731, printer Edward Cave launched the world's first general-interest magazine inside, where Samuel Johnson worked, before the site birthed Saint John Ambulance in 1873.

London · from the walk “Clerkenwell Uncovered: From the World's First Tube to London's Radical Heart” · audio ~4 min · Generated

St John's Gate, St John's Lane, London EC1M 4DA

What world-first publication was created at St John's Gate in London in 1731?

Look at this ancient stone archway in front of you... over five hundred years old, and still standing. This is Saint John's Gate, and it has witnessed more drama, reinvention, and sheer improbability than almost any building in London.......... The story begins around eleven forty-eight, when the Knights Hospitaller, a military order born in the Holy Land, established their English headquarters right here in Clerkenwell. Their priory grew into one of the wealthiest and most powerful religious houses in the country. So powerful, in fact, that the Prior of Saint John ranked as the First baron of England in the roll of peers.......... But that power made enemies. In thirteen eighty-one, during the Peasants' Revolt, Wat Tyler's rebels stormed this precinct, burned the priory to the ground... and beheaded the prior, Robert Hales, who also served as Lord High Treasurer, right in the courtyard of the Tower of London. The gate you see today was rebuilt in fifteen oh four by Prior Thomas Docwra... and it is the Only surviving medieval public gateway in all of London.......... Then came Henry the Eighth. When the Order was dissolved in fifteen forty, the last prior, Sir William Weston, was granted a pension of one thousand pounds a year... a staggering sum. But he never collected a single penny. He died on the seventh of May, fifteen forty... the very same day the act of dissolution was passed. Chronicles say he collapsed upon hearing the news, dying, reportedly, of sheer grief.......... After that, the Gate lived many lives. The painter William Hogarth grew up here as a boy, from seventeen oh one to seventeen oh nine, while his father Richard ran a rather unusual coffee house inside... one that offered Latin lessons along with your coffee. It was not a great success.......... But here's what truly changed history. In seventeen thirty-one, a printer named Edward Cave set up shop in these rooms and launched The Gentleman's Magazine... the world's First general-interest magazine! He even coined the very word "magazine" to mean a storehouse of knowledge. And every issue carried an illustration of This gate on its front page. A young, struggling writer named Samuel Johnson found his first regular employment here, scribbling away in a garret upstairs. Parliament had banned reporting of its debates... so Johnson brilliantly disguised his parliamentary reports as "Debates in the Senate of Magna Lilliputia," a cheeky nod to Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. Most of the speeches were Johnson's own invention... political fiction masquerading as fact.......... Cave even died here at the Gate in seventeen fifty-four, with Johnson faithfully at his side.......... And then, the final twist. In eighteen seventy-three, the revived Order of Saint John reclaimed this very gatehouse... and from these rooms grew the organization we now know as Saint John Ambulance. From crusader knights to rebel fury, from coffeehouses to the birth of modern journalism... this single stone archway has quietly shaped the world.

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