| The CharterHouse |
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King James I founded the Charterhouse or Carthusian monastery in Perth in 1429 for a prior and 12 monks. This was the first and only Carthusian Monastery founded in Scotland and James' intention seems to have been to encourage the reformation of religious life in Scotland and to develop a new, royal Mausoleum. The name of the Perth house was the "Vale of Virtue". The Carthusian order had been founded by St Bruno in 1084 at La Grande Chartreuse, near Grenoble in France. Unusually, the monks lived as hermits in individual cells, each with a garden attached, arranged round a central cloister, meeting in their chapel only for services. Pomarium Street is probably named after the monastic orchard or pomarium. James I was buried in the church in 1437, following his murder in Perth. His widow, Joan Beaufort was buried there in 1445, and Margaret Tudor, widow of James IV and sister of Henry VIII of England, was buried there in 1541. The monastery was destroyed at the Reformation in 1559, although a gateway from the monastery is supposed to have been rebuilt as a porch in St John's Kirk. |
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| Medieval Hospitals |
| Perth had five medieval hospitals for the sick, the poor and pilgrims or travellers: St Leonard's, St Mary Magdalene's, St Paul's, St Anne's and St Catherine's, as well as a leper hospital at Bridgend. St Leonard's and St Mary Magdalene's were annexed by King James I to his newly founded Charterhouse or Carthusian Monastery in 1434, but St Paul's, St Anne's and St Catherine's continued to the Reformation. |
| King James VI Hospital | ||
The Minister and Kirk Session of St John's Kirk were appointed the managers of the Hospital on behalf of the " poor, maimed, weak, distressed persons, orphans and fatherless chidren" in the burgh, and they were to choose a Master of the Hospital annually to administer the funds. On 29th July 1587, King James VI, having attained his majority, granted the Hospital a new charter, which confirmed the grants to the Hospital made in the previous charter. |
| Early Buildings |
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The 1573 accounts record the expenses of fitting up a "tour" for "mony puir folkis to luge in". This tower has not been identified, but it served as the earliest hospital building for the poor. A little after 1580, the old medieval hospital of St Anne's became for a time the site of the almshouse for the bedesmen and some poor women. Then, in 1596 the Kirk Session decided to build a new hospital building at St Mary's Chapel, beside the bridge of Perth. This remained the Hospital of Perth until its demolition about 1651, to provide stones for the Cromwellian citadel on the South Inch. Between about 1651 and 1750 there appears to have been no hospital building until the present King James VI Hospital was built. |
| The Hospital Building |
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The present building was built in 1749-50 at a cost of œ1,614-10s-7d (œ1614.53). The building is H-shaped, four stories high and surmounted by a belfry which contains a bell, presumably taken from the mansion of Nairn in Strathord, to the north of Perth. It was to be a poorhouse, an industrial school, an infirmary and a reformatory for vagrants. It was to be provided with "beds, clothes for beds, kitchen utensils, and brewing looms, and utensils for [industrial] work". In 1814 the poor were no longer required to reside in the hospital, and a separate Perth Infirmary (now the A K Bell Library) was opened in that year. The building was put to other uses: charity schools and various benevolent institutions, while other portions were let as dwellings. |
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| The Hospital Building |
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The present building was built in 1749-50 at a cost of œ1,614-10s-7d (œ1614.53). The building is H-shaped, four stories high and surmounted by a belfry which contains a bell, presumably taken from the mansion of Nairn in Strathord, to the north of Perth. It was to be a poorhouse, an industrial school, an infirmary and a reformatory for vagrants. It was to be provided with "beds, clothes for beds, kitchen utensils, and brewing looms, and utensils for [industrial] work". In 1814 the poor were no longer required to reside in the hospital, and a separate Perth Infirmary (now the A K Bell Library) was opened in that year. The building was put to other uses: charity schools and various benevolent institutions, while other portions were let as dwellings. |
| The Hospital Today |
| In 1974-5 the building was competely refurbished with generous grants from the Gannochy Trust and the Government, and twenty-one flats were created. The rents from these and from the Scones Lethendy Mortification, (income from farmland in Scone parish bequeathed in the 17th and 18th centuries), now provide most of the funds of the Hospital. The Hospital is still managed by the Minister and Kirk Session of St John's Kirk as well as those of Letham St Mark's Church. They appoint the Hospital Master to administer the funds of the Hospital and distribute them to the "eleemosynaries" in terms of its original foundation. |
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