British History Online informs that a house was "built by ... Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, in 1245; but in the thirtieth year of Henry III. it was granted by the king to Peter, Count of Savoy ... " after whom it was then named.
King John II of France was a guest here when he died in April 1364.
On the 13th June 1381, the Palace of the Savoy was burned and destroyed by rebels under the leadership of Wat Tyler. The palace was not restored but modified to serve as a prison. In the early 1500s, funded from Henry VII's will, the Savoy was rebuilt as a hostel and hospital for the poor. But it was used more as barracks and a prison. Most of it was swept away for the construction of Waterloo Bridge and the Embankment.
Our picture shows the Savoy in about 1760. It's difficult to determine quite when it ceased to exist but the Picture source website tells the story (or did - it's now, 2024, a dead link).
This 1746 map shows the Savoy estate, darkly shaded, to the west (left) of Somerset House and Water Gate. Mapping this onto the current street plan, starting from the Embankment and travelling anti-clockwise, the boundary ran approximately: up the east side of the Waterloo Bridge approach road; along a line parallel to Strand but a little to the south; down Savoy Buildings and Savoy Hill, to Savoy Place which is about where the river front was (before the embankment was created); along the old river front to Waterloo Bridge.
That's what we got from the map but Wikipedia has some more details, which brings other areas in, such as the Savoy Hotel, Shell Mex House, the area around Burleigh House and the Lyceum Theatre and Somerset House.
That map shows 3 churches within the Savoy: French Church, Dutch Church and Gerin (illegible, German possibly?) Church, as well as "Jesuites Ground" and "St John". None of them where today's Savoy Chapel is.
See also: St Pauls German Evangelical Reformed Church and German Lutheran church in London.
2024: The history of the ownership of the Savoy is very well covered by A London Inheritance. Even just listing the owners gives a long list: Simon de Montfort; Peter, Earl of Savoy (from whom the estate got its name); a small religious establishment; Queen Eleanor of Provence; her son, Edmund, 1st Earl of Lancaster (1245-96) (at which the Savoy Estate became part of the Duchy of Lancaster); his son Thomas; Henry, another son of Edmund; Henry’s son Henry Grossmont: his daughter Blanche and her husband John of Gaunt; their son Henry Bolingbroke; Richard II; Henry Bolingbroke again in 1399, but now he's Henry IV.
A London Inheritance says "Henry IV defined that the estates belonging to the Duchy of Lancaster should be held by the Monarch as a private estate, separate to all other estates, and should descend through the Monarchy." And that's how it stands today.
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