Across St James’s Mews, from the Liverpool Street platform side of St James’s Street station, is a large building that was a cinema in the past before it became what it is today, a dental practice. Back in the 1920s it was known as a right old flea pit:

"During the showing of the big film, an old gent would play the violin, and a lady the piano. They played on a small balcony, on the right hand side of the wall. Sometimes the boys would bring in a catapult and shoot at the players. Every time a train stopped at the station, we could hear it, and it would put us off the film." (A.S Jaspar, Looking Back without Anger (1969).

Nowadays, the Abbey Dental Practice that occupies the premises is probably like many others, advertising to the left of its door that they welcome NHS and private patients. They want us to know that they offer ‘A friendly and reliable service’. This, I wonder, is in contrast to where? There is a dentist practice in the High Street, the Walthamstow Dental Practice, but I met no-one there looking either stern or slovenly.

I googled them on the internet, and was surprised to discover there are 'Abbey Dental Practices' all over the country. Barking, Belfast, Bury St Edmunds, Chester, Glastonbury, Harrow, Hexham and Toquay - all have an Abbey. What is that about? I wonder. Maybe there are a lot of dentists called Abbey. I try a site listing the individual dentists themselves. There are none. So why are they all called Abbey Dental Practice? Are all these practices just a coincidence or are they all part of one gigantic business, festering like an abscess underneath the gums of the NHS? I can't tell.

Maybe they like the name Abbey because it comes early in the alphabet -who would want to be Aardvark Dentists? It also sounds dependable, trustworthy. I tend to think though of abbeys in terms of school history trips to a pile of ruins. They can't be intending to have us all imagining our mouths filled with tombstones and ruined quadrangles, can they?

Eventually I wondered if there really is a historical connection between the cloistered clergy and the dental profession. According to Sir Ian Gainsford in his 1999 William Guy Memorial Lecture on the history of dental education the connection is quite direct, though a bit odd in some ways.

In 1072, a papal edict required monks and priests to be clean shaven, and this introduced the professional barbers into the monasteries. A subsequent papal edict in 1163, which prohibited members of the church from taking part in operations involving blood letting, led to those professional barbers becoming barber surgeons, who performed in the monasteries the lancing of boils, the setting of broken bones and the pulling of teeth. The dentists never looked back, developing within the monastic orders in the next couple of hundred years into a profession we could recognize today, distinguishable from the overlapping occupations of barbers and surgeons, albeit in a profession without painkillers or many skills at polishing.

Almost like in a New Labour PFI pilot initiative, under a wheeze designed by Cardinal Wolsey and a physician called Thomas Linacre, the Archbishop of Canterbury began issuing licenses for the practice of medicine and dentistry from 1511 within his diocese. The Peter's Pence Act of 1533, allowed the Archbishop to issue dispensations throughout all England. Applicants were expected to provide evidence of their medical or surgical expertise, such as letters testimonial, but I suspect this was also about collecting fees for the issue of the licenses. The Dissolution of the Monasteries itself, was the formal but violent process which took place between 1536 and 1541, but as far as dentists were concerned, the groundwork had already taken place and their accreditation process was secure. The dissolution of the monasteries therefore failed to sever the connection between dentists and the church. This formal connection continued until the Medical Acts of 1858, which set up The General Council of Medical Education and Registration of the United Kingdom. Now we can't blame the bishop, though we can pray for the dentist to be any good.

Abbey Dental Practice at 25 St. James's Street says it is ‘A long-established service with a smile.' They do not say how long, but something tells me their roots do not stretch back as far as the middle ages. In fact, in a development which brings them closer to their surgical and medical colleagues than a medieval dentist was, they offer some fairly modern services like general anaesthesia. As the sign to the left of the door says, they offer 'IV Sedation for Nervous clients – sleep through the treatment’.

Opposite the Bengal Curry House, to the left of WM Smith. There is a nearby car park.

Tel 0208 521 2816

[Update 26 April 2009]