Savoy Hospital

Located along the Strand in Westminster, the site of Savoy Hospital was initially the manor of Peter II of Savoy. The manor was destroyed in the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt. In 1505, Henry VII began to convert the space into the Savoy Hospital, modelled on the hospitals of Florence and Milan (Slack 229–30). Henry VII’s 1509 will granted money for the expansion, improvement, and maintenance of the site to receive and lodge nightly oon hundreth pouer folks (qtd. in Loftie 89). This is also the figure given by Stow in recalling the endowment: an Hospitall for reliefe of one hundreth poore people, founded by Henry VII (Stow 1598, sig. 2D7r).
Edward VI granted the hospital to the City of London on June 9, 1553. Supplies and holdings were then transferred to Bridewell (Loftie 111). Mary I restored the hospital in 1556. However, with the founding of the new hospitals in London, the demand for the hospital’s former function had diminished, and the site was instead used by the crown as a multipurpose site, housing nobility and soldiers, and was it also the setting for the 1661 Savoy Conference (Loftie 145).

References