Museum of the Order of St John set to open

Published: 29 October, 2010
by TERRY MESSENGER

PRICELESS paintings, artefacts and archives telling the story of one of the world’s oldest charities will go on display in Clerkenwell this week.

The Museum of the Order of St John opens on Wednesday at the thousand-year-old organisation’s  base in St John’s Gate.

The order is best known for founding Jerusalem’s famous eye hospital in the 11th century and running St John’s Ambulance – along with other charitable schemes worldwide. 

Items from its past, including ancient Maltese silver, a medieval Flemish altarpiece and a cannon donated by Henry VIII, will be exhibited at the museum. 

The £3.7million cost of the project was met by the Heritage Lottery Fund, the charitable Wellcome Foundation and private benefactors. The order is a Protestant offshoot of the Roman Catholic Knights of Malta and is also known as the Knights Hospitaller.

Members include Nelson Mandela who said: “St John’s focus is on primary health care, especially among the poorest of the poor. Its capacity to tap the most generous and caring human impulses gives it a special place in our hearts”