Jerusalem Passage

Jerusalem Passage in London is an 800-year-old alleyway originally created in the 1140s as a covered monastic corridor for the Clerkenwell Priory of the Knights Hospitallers. The passage later gained fame when coal merchant Thomas Britton hosted 36 years of weekly concerts above his coal store starting in 1678, attracting guests like Jonathan Swift and musician George Frideric Handel.

London Β· from the walk β€œMonks, Martyrs & Marxists” Β· audio ~4 min Β· Generated

Jerusalem Passage, London EC1V 4JP

Who hosted famous 17th-century concerts above a coal store in London's Jerusalem Passage?

Take a breath... and look around you. This narrow little passage, squeezed between old brick walls, is Jerusalem Passage... and it is Far older than it looks.......... This short passageway owes its origins to the Clerkenwell Priory, home of the Monastic Order of the Knights Hospitallers of Saint John of Jerusalem. That priory was established in the eleven forties as the English headquarters of the Order. And this cramped alley you're standing in? It was originally a covered passage running between monastery buildings, known as the "long entry." After the dissolution, when the land was sold off, that old internal route simply became a public walkway... which it remains to this day.......... Now picture it. This passage originally led to the "Little Gate of Saint John," the northern entrance into the Priory. In the thirteen hundreds, the kitchens were on your right, and to your left was a range of dormitories and other buildings. Knights in black mantles with white crosses walked these very steps before departing for the Holy Land.......... The passage gets its name from an old public house, the Saint John of Jerusalem, which stood at the northeast corner until about seventeen sixty. But here's the part most people never hear about.......... Right here, at this very corner, lived one of London's most extraordinary characters. Thomas Britton's home was a former stable at the corner of Aylesbury Street and Jerusalem Passage. The ground floor stored coal, while he lived in a single room above, reached by an external ladder. Britton was a coal merchant... but he was also a self-taught genius. From sixteen seventy-eight, he held weekly concerts in the loft over his coal shop. That concert series ran for Thirty-Six years... the longest-lasting in the late seventeenth century.......... And the guests! Britton converted his tiny loft into a music room complete with a harpsichord and a tiny organ, on which George Frideric Handel was said to have played. Duchesses climbed a rickety ladder, in full gowns, just to hear music in a room where a tall person could barely stand upright. Literary giants like Jonathan Swift and Horace Walpole noted his contributions to British intellectual life.......... And his death? Well, legend has it that it was truly bizarre. A magistrate named Robe brought a famous ventriloquist called Honeyman, a blacksmith known as "the talking smith." Honeyman projected a ghostly voice, commanding the superstitious Britton to fall to his knees and pray... or die within hours. The terrified coal man obeyed, but the fright was too much. He died within days. That was October, seventeen fourteen.......... So this little alley holds eight hundred years of layered history... from Crusader knights preparing for war, to a coal merchant hosting Handel in his attic. Not bad for a passage you could walk in thirty seconds.

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