According to Tanner and Dugdale, the Almonry of the Abbey, consisting of an almshouse for converts and a school for poor boys, was attached to the walls of the House, was dedicated to St. Thomas of Canterbury, and was under the government of the Monastery Almoner. This Almonry perished with the Abbey in the Dissolution, and had nothing to do with the Hospital of St. Thomas.
It is stated by Tanner that after the Fire of 1212, which destroyed the church of St. Mary Overies together with their Hospital or Almonry, the Prior and brethren erected a Hospital near their ruins in which they established their church for a time. When their own House was rebuilt, Peter de Rupibus, Bishop of Winchester, transferred the Hospital to the other side of the causeway for some supposed advantages of air. It was built on ground belonging to Amicius, Archdeacon of Surrey, and dedicated to St. Thomas the Martyr. It was always in the patronage of the Bishop of Winchester. A list of the Masters is preserved.
Stow, however, says that the Hospital was held of the Abbey of Bermondsey, and that in the year 1428 Thetford, then the Abbot, sold to the Master of the Hospital the right to keep all the lands belonging to the Abbey and then held by the Hospital at a small rent.
It is impossible to reconcile these statements unless we suppose that the Hospital itself, always separate from, and independent of, the Abbey, was occupying lands of the Abbey of which it desired to keep the control.
On the Dissolution, the House was valued at a yearly income of £309: 1: 11 clear; it had a Master, Brethren, three lay sisters, and made up forty aids for the sick with food and firing.
In 1552 the City bought the House of Edward the Sixth and opened it again as a Hospital.
The place has little history. The brethren had at their gates the right of market for corn and other commodities. The Archdeacon of Surrey, in 1238, had a hall, a chapel, a stable, and a residence in the Hospital. The Bishops of Winchester claimed the right of visitation, which was exercised on more than one occasion.
The old buildings continued until the close of the seventeenth century, when they were taken down and the Hospital was erected in their place. This House remained until it became necessary to destroy it, in order to make way for the railway station and extension on its site. The demolition of old St. Thomas’s is one of the few acts of destruction which one can regard with satisfaction. For the removal of the Hospital to the crowded streets of Lambeth, leaving Guy’s for the eastern part of South London, was unquestionably a great gain to the former, and no loss to the latter, which is fully served by Guy’s.