Locksmith EC4M: Where Modern Medicine Quietly Took Shape

EC4M centres on St Paul's Cathedral. We cover that remarkable story in detail elsewhere. Tucked into the streets nearby, though, sits a building with a different past. Apothecaries' Hall started life as the guesthouse of the Dominican Priory of the Black Friars. That was long before any apothecary ever set foot inside. The Worshipful Society of Apothecaries acquired the building in 1632. That was more than three decades before the Great Fire of 1666 tore through much of the surrounding City.

That fire didn't destroy everything. A real piece of the original 13th-century priory walls survived the blaze. It stands roughly nine metres high, and remains part of the hall's own courtyard today. Rebuilding ran from 1668 to 1672. What emerged still stands as the oldest extant livery hall anywhere in the City.

Where British Pharmacy Properly Began

What happened next inside that hall mattered well beyond its own walls. In 1671 and 1672, the Society established what they called an Elaboratory. It was dedicated to producing medicines on a genuinely industrial scale. That operation is now credited with laying the actual foundations of Britain's pharmaceutical industry. Manufacturing and retail trade continued directly from the hall until 1922. That's a remarkably long run for a single site. The Society's influence reached further still. An Act of Parliament in 1815 gave it statutory authority to examine medical students and license them to practise. That qualification evolved directly into today's general practitioner. In 1673, the Society also founded the Chelsea Physic Garden. It kept managerial control of that garden until 1899. We're considerably less concerned with centuries of medical history. A lock anywhere across EC4M gets fixed properly, whatever guild or garden once traced back to the building nearby.