Charterhouse is a former Carthusian monastery, established in 1371. Dissolved by Henry VIII in 1537, it became a mansion for wealthy nobles, including Lord North, Thomas Howard (4th Duke of Norfolk), and passing to his son, the 1st Earl of Suffolk. In 1611 it came into the hands of Thomas Sutton who, on his death in December that same year, bequeathed money to endow a hospital and almshouse, a school and a chapel on the site. After becoming Charterhouse School and later Merchant Taylor's School it reverted to being an almshouse, with around 40 resident Brothers today. Behind the walls are 6 Black Mulberries. There are 3 in the Lodge Court, by the front wall overlooking Charterhouse Square (girths 130 cm). The two large Mulberries in Preachers Court were thought by Webster (London Trees 1920) to have been planted around 1840. Webster claimed they are cuttings from the so-called Milton's mulberry in Christ's College Cambridge, which dates to 1609. A recent dendrological study using bores to count tree rings (by Jonathan Lageard, 2020) estimated these trees to have been planted as saplings in the 1880s or 1890s, possibly to commemorate Queen Victoria's Golden (1887) or Diamond (1897) Jubilee. According to former Head Gardner Claire Davies, one Mulberry was uprooted by a bomb in the Second World War but replanted by the Brothers. There is a sixth mulberry in a corner of Master's Court. Every July Charterhouse gives a basket of the first mulberries from the oldest tree (the so-called Queen's Mulberry) to the incumbent Lord Mayor. It's possible that there were mulberry trees here earlier, perhaps in Tudor times. Inside the building is a painting of one of the Preachers Court mulberries.

Find out more at www.thecharterhouse.org/mulberry-trees-charterhouse/

If you have visited this site, or have an update, please leave a comment below.