Royal Foundation of St Katharine

The Royal Foundation of St Katharine is a religious charity based in the East End of London. The Foundation traces its origins back to the medieval church and monastic hospital St Katharine's by the Tower (full name Royal Hospital and Collegiate Church of St. Katharine by the Tower), established in 1147, next to the Tower of London. The church, a royal peculiar, was the heart of the Precinct of St Katharine by the Tower, a small but densely populated district; a Liberty with extra-parochial status, and which later became a civil parish. Both the church and the district were destroyed in 1825 to make way for the new St Katharine Docks which took its name from the church and district it replaced. The institution itself survived the destruction associated with the construction of the dock, by transferring to a site near Regents Park, but it returned to the East End after World War II, using the site of Ratcliff's parish church, St James, which had been destroyed by bombing during the Blitz.